Email scams surge over the holiday — here’s how Gmail keeps you safe

Every year, scammers go into overdrive during the holiday season, using all kinds of tactics to get your attention. Since mid-November, we've seen a massive surge in email traffic compared to previous months, making protecting inboxes an even greater challenge than normal.

With more than 2.5 billion users, Gmail is the world's largest email provider, and we know how important it is to keep inboxes everywhere safe. We invest heavily to meet this responsibility, blocking more than 99.9% of spam, phishing and malware in Gmail. These efforts are year-round, but become even more necessary during the holidays.

Thanks to new Gmail security features we launched over the past year, users reported 35% fewer scams (phishing, malware, etc.) hitting inboxes during the first month of the holiday season compared to last year. Millions more unwanted and potentially dangerous messages were blocked before they even reached inboxes. Here's how we made this happen, and what you can do to stay ahead of scams.