A highly-sophisticated identity phishing attack has targeted as many as 1 billion users of Google’s Gmail service worldwide, the Internet search giant seeking confirmed on Wednesday.

The virus arrived in Gmail users’ inboxes and posed as an electronic mail from a trusted contact, asking users to check out a connected Google Docs or GDocs file.

Users who clicked on the link were taken to a real Google security page, where they were asked to give consent for the fake application, posing as GDocs, to manage their email accounts. It gradually gained control of their whole email histories and stretched itself to all of their contacts.

Google, the world’s leading Internet search service, claimed that it has taken action to protect its users and has disabled offending accounts.

In a newly released statement, the company said, “We’ve removed the fake pages, pushed updates through Safe Browsing, and our abuse team is working to prevent this kind of spoofing from happening again. We encourage users to report phishing emails in Gmail.”

As per cyber security experts, after taking control of your Gmail account, scammers or hackers can harvest any personal data ever sent or received by you in an email. That could also allow them to make password-reset requests on other services, for instance, Amazon and Facebook accounts.