Yesterday we wrote about a “ Google Docs ” phishing campaign Attack.Phishing that aimed to trick Attack.Phishing you into authorising a malicious third-party Gmail app so that it could take over your email account and your contact list for its own ends . One of those ends seems to have been to spam out Attack.Phishing another wave of those same fraudulent emails to your friends and colleagues , in the hope of getting them to authorise the imposter app , and thus to send Attack.Phishing out another wave of emails , and another , and so on . Technically , that made it more than just a “ phish Attack.Phishing ” , which we ’ ll define very loosely here as an email that aims to trick Attack.Phishing , coerce or cajole Attack.Phishing you into performing an authentication task , or giving away personal data , that you later wish you hadn ’ t . The classic old-school example of a phish Attack.Phishing is an email that tells you that you have lost money to fraud Attack.Phishing , or gained money from a tax refund , so please use this web link to login to your bank account to sort this out . These days , however , the word phishing Attack.Phishing is generally understood much more broadly , describing any sort of misdirection Attack.Phishing that gets you to authorise or to give away something you should have kept private . Many users have learned to avoid login links in emails , so the crooks have broadened the range of threats and incentives by which they phish Attack.Phishing for access to your online life . This week ’ s so-called “ Google Docs ” attack could spread all by itself , helped on by users giving it the permission it needed along the way , just like the infamous Love Bug virus from 2000 , or the pernicious FriendGreetings adware from 2002 . Technically , then , that makes the “ Google Docs ” attack a virus , or more specifically a worm , which is a special sort of virus that spreads by itself , without needing pre-existing host files to hook onto .