Phishing SCAM! – Apple iTunes

No, this is not a scam by Apple, it’s a scam pretending to be Apple. And, apart from a few small giveaways, it could almost be genuine :

The email came to the correct email address, but as you can see, ‘they’ didn’t know my real name so the message is just addressed to ‘Dear Customer’. That’s dead giveaway no. 1.

The grammar and spelling isn’t quite right. ‘…from the iTunes Store on a Apple Iphone…’ Dead giveaway no. 2. Apple can’t afford to make errors like these in official correspondence.

The trickiest clue, however, is in the URL [internet address] provided as the link.

The real URL for Apple support is :

https://http://www.apple.com/au/support/itunes/contact/  [the orange colour is for emphasis only].

The bogus URL is :

[Note: To ensure that no one accidentally clicks on that URL, I took a ‘picture’ of it instead of typing it in. Pictures contain no clickable information.]

It you look at the two addresses you can see obvious differences. Unfortunately, first impressions are quite powerful and even I had to check that URL by going to the official Apple website.

Another tricky thing about that bogus URL is that it does not mention having to sign in to anything, which is normally another dead giveaway. However, clicking on the URL could do 1 of 2 things :

1. it could take you to an Apple lookalike site where you are asked to enter login details, or

2. it could take you to a site that will load malware [or worse] onto your computer.

So quite a clever scam. If anyone knows more about it I’d love to hear in comments.

cheers

Meeks