Phishing is a method used to acquire personal information such as bank accounts, credit card details, usernames and passwords. The method has more chances to be successful is the one that asks for that information is appeared to be a trustworthy entity. If you read an email asking for your bank details then you know that it is a phishing scam. If you receive an email that you have won thousands of dollars but you have to give your personal details and pay an amount in order to send you the price, it is a (phishing) scam. The same applies for email that have a link and ask you to update your password for security reasons, for any kind of service/page such as Facebook, PayPal, Ebay, Google and so on.
Hackers found a way to successfully phishing Google users. They create a web page which looks exactly as the Google’s login page. This web page is not on Google so in order to appear as Google they use Google’s translation service and they put the URL that is returned by the translation. That URL starts with http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en and it is psychological manipulation. Some users think that the site is the original and they insert their credentials without second though. Hackers find more clever ways to gain what they want and users must be more careful with their personal details.
If you have received an email that tells you to change your password or login to see your emails and it is convincing and you can’t ignore it at least do not click on the link on that email. Type the URL of the website/email you want to check and login there. This way at least you ensure that you insert your credentials to the official website. Ensure is a strong word, if your PC is infected hackers can get your password in more than one ways. For example, you can be infected with key-logger that records anything you type, including user names, passwords and credit card details. Another example is that if your computer is infected, hackers can redirect your browser request and if you type www.google.com you may be watching one of their websites, even if your browser shows that you are on www.google.com and it is very difficult to find out.