Google Forms is a terrific free tool that lets you create surveys, quizzes and forms for gathering data. It is widely used in education, business and in people’s personal affairs. It is easy to use, acciesible through a shareable link and secure. Unfortunately, however, scammers take advantage of its acceptance as a legitimate tool to use it to perpetrate a variety of scams including scams by which it is used to create fake login pages that appear to be those of banks or colleges as well as to create phony surveys with promises of prizes in exchange for providing personal data. Scams using Google Forms increased by 63% last year and appear to be happening with even more frequency in 2025. Scams using Google Forms are sent through Google’s own mail servers so they can avoid email security filters making them appear more legitimate. Unfortunately, if you provide the asked for personal information, you set yourself up to become a victim of identity theft.
TIPS
Trust me, you can’t trust anyone. If you get a Google Forms email that appears to come from your bank, college or any other institution, confirm with the real bank or other sender by phone or email before provdiing any personal information. As for Google Forms communications offering a payment in return for personal information or contests asking you to provide personal information, the risk of being scammed is too great to respond by providing the requested information.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive free daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address on the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”