Google lifts the lid: 170 billion phishing emails hit inboxes every day

Scammers fire more fraudulent emails in 24 hours than most people will read in a lifetime. Royal Hansen, Google’s security VP, told Business Insider España that 170 billion of the 300 billion messages Google handles daily are spam or phishing—an avalanche that now dwarfs every other threat vector in Europe.

Voice scams sprint past old-school malware

Mandiant’s 2026 M-Trends report, compiled from 500,000 hours of breach forensics, shows the continent flipping the script: Europeans spot six out of ten intrusions themselves, reversing last year’s 40-60 reliance on outside alerts. Meanwhile, crooks pivot faster than ever. One attacker gains the foothold, passes the keyboard in under 30 seconds, and the second actor detonates ransomware before a help-desk ticket is even filed.

Low-priority alerts? They’re now high-impact detonators.

The report flags another twist: voice-based social engineering has rocketed into the global top-two infection routes. A single phone call can now do what once required a malicious attachment. Human conversation, not code, is the new payload.

Tech overtakes banks as prime target

For two straight years finance wore the bull’s-eye. In 2025, technology companies bled more incidents, according to Google Cloud Security telemetry. IP, not IBANs, is the hot commodity.

Europe’s defenders, at least, are waking up sooner. Faster internal detection shrinks the window between first click and full compromise—if security teams trust their own dashboards. Many still don’t.

The takeaway: the inbox remains the front door, but the burglar now rings the doorbell first—and he has your voice on tape.