Gmail Users Asked to Change Email

Now, Beware of Fraudsters!

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia –Fraud via email and websites is increasingly rampant. Google, for example, claims to have blocked more than 99.9% of phishing and malware-laden emails on Gmail. However, that alone is considered insufficient.

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has made fraudulent practices increasingly sophisticated and continues to threaten the security of 2.5 million Gmail users.

“With more than 2.5 million Gmail users, we are currently deploying AI models to strengthen security defenses in Gmail, including using new large language (LLM) trained to eradicate phishing, malware, and spam,” said Google, quoted from Forbes, Tuesday (11/2/2025).

Cybersecurity firm McAfee believes the AI ​​revolution works both ways, for good and bad. Google could use AI to eradicate fraud, but fraudsters will return to using AI to create attacks that are difficult to detect.

“As AI becomes more accessible today, cybercriminals are using it to create more convincing and personalized scams that are harder to detect,” McAfee said.

Mailmodo said that spam messages contributed to more than 46.8% of overall email traffic this month. This has led many companies to look for alternative ways to interact in the workplace. For example, using Teams, Slack, even standard instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram.

The best solution to avoid fraud is to hide your email so that it is not known to bad actors. However, this is quite difficult, because many things require an email address for verification.

Apple is trying to protect users by launching the ‘Hide My Email’ feature. This feature allows users’ email addresses to be hidden or set to private.

“To keep your personal email address private, you can create a unique, random email address that forwards to your personal email account, so you don’t have to share your real email address when filling out forms or signing up for newsletters on the web, or when sending emails,” Apple said in a statement regarding Hide My Email.

Last November, Google also developed a similar feature for Gmail. This was detected by Android Authority through a new APK dissection.

The feature called ‘Shielded Email’ contains a system that creates an alias email address for single use or limited use. Messages that come into the alias address will then be forwarded to the user’s primary email.

If this feature is available, users should use it. That way, users need to create an alias email that is shared for verification purposes, then the alias email will be forwarded to the primary email with an address that does not need to be shared publicly.

For Apple users who already have Hide My Email, they should immediately use it to maintain security from email fraud. When it was first released, Apple said:

“Now users can create an unlimited number of fake addresses that they don’t even check, significantly reducing interactions. They can easily disable it without affecting their primary email, which means marketing databases can be full of ‘dead’ addresses,” said Apple.

Although Google’s LLM system is able to detect fraud patterns quickly and widely and has, detected spam 20% better, and reviewed 1,000 times more user spam reports every day, but that alone is not enough, as McAfee said.

There needs to be drastic updates to secure users from fraud spread in emails. For example, by labeling fraudulent emails that enter the user’s account as ‘spam’ or ‘dangerous’.

In addition, users must also be more proactive by activating ‘Hide My Email’ on Apple or ‘Shielded Email’ on Android when the feature is available.

For even higher security, it is better to create a new email address as an ‘alias’ to be shared publicly. In addition, you can create a new email address for the main email that is not shared publicly as much as possible.

SOURCE : CNBC INDONESIA