14 DAY TRIAL // A report claims that a scammer has sent out spam spoofed to appear to come from Apple, in another attempt to con MobileMe users into providing their credit card information. The phony e-mail directs users to a fake site designed to look like Apple's. Users unknowingly follow the email link and enter their information on a fake Apple web page that is observably formatted wrong.
Significant differences between a real such message from Apple and the phony spam could easily be found, says the AppleInsider report - "Apple's official email cites the account's User Name, the ending digits of their credit card number, and directs the user to navigate to MobileMe themselves to correct their information within the online account section, rather than providing a link to follow,” reads the piece. Should Apple be the sender of the message, users would initiate a MobileMe web session secured via SSL before they are prompted to enter their credit card information. According to the report, there is no SSL security on the fake site that directs users via the phony / spam e-mail (pictured above).
As usual, MobileMe users are advised to check whether or not their browser has initiated an SSL connection and that the URL appears correct. Still, the best way to avoid being duped into providing your credit card information to fake Apple is to navigate to the billing site yourself. This means users should ignore any e-mail-supplied link if they have even the slightest doubt it is from Apple.
About MobileMe
MobileMe automatically pushes new email, contacts and calendar events to your Mac, PC, iPhone and iPod touch, and makes sure all your information stays up to date across all your devices. The changes you make on one device are automatically "pushed" to the MobileMe "cloud," then back to every device you use. Besides push email, push calendar and push contacts, MobileMe also offers web applications at me.com, a MobileMe Gallery for photo sharing, MobileMe iDisk for online document access and 20GB of online storage, for a monthly fee. MobileMe replaces .Mac.