14 DAY TRIAL // Google's Webmaster Central reported that several German webmasters received numerous fake penalty email notifications, informing them that their pages were relegated on lower positions and excluded from the Google index. The company's officials announced that all these messages are fake emails, although they admit that Google is also sending penalty notifications to the affected users. Because the problem is quite important for the company's image, Google stopped sending email messages so, any penalty notification you might receive is surely a fake.
"Because these emails are easy to mistake for authentic ones from Google, we've temporarily discontinued sending them as we work on ways to provide more secure communication mechanisms. We hope this will reduce confusion," Vanessa Fox from Google Webmaster Central said today. "Note that the emails we sent did not include attachments. In addition, some of the emails mentioned 301 redirects as being the violation in question. Rest assured that 301 redirects are not a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines," she added.
As you might know, the search giant has several guidelines that might get your website banned if any of them is infringed by the content of the page. If your webpage gets banned, the company sends you a penalty notification through email and informs you about the relegation.
However, these email messages are somehow a chance to exploit some new computers because the spammers are using the penalties to attach malicious files to the notification and to make the users' computers vulnerable to attacks. Please keep in mind that Google is not including attachments to the email messages so, if you receive any mail notification informing you about the relegation of your website, it is surely a fake and must be ignored.