Gmail already blocked billions of COVID-19 related spam and malware mails

In a new blog post, Google talks about how it's tackling the cyber threats seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among other things, Google reveals data about how much COVID-19 related e-mails it's blocking.

The search giant says machine learning algorithms used for Gmail block a massive 18 million daily malware and phishing e-mails related to COVID-19. This is on top of the over 240 million daily COVID-19 spam mails. Google claims its filter can block over 99.9% of spam.

Every day, Gmail blocks more than 100 million phishing emails. During the last week, we saw 18 million daily malware and phishing emails related to COVID-19. This is in addition to more than 240 million COVID-related daily spam messages. Our ML models have evolved to understand and filter these threats, and we continue to block more than 99.9% of spam, phishing, and malware from reaching our users.

The phishing attacks and scams we’re seeing use both fear and financial incentives to create urgency to try to prompt users to respond.