I’ve been tracking “Apple” in the spam traps for the past ten days and find the phishers and cyber-crooks actively pursuing Mac users’ accounts at the App store.
I know the attacks have increased on FaceBook and Twitter, but I had not expected to start seeing phishing spam emails in the hold folder.
If you have an Apple App Store account, be very careful to HOVER over the link in the email prior to clicking. Here, is an example of one of the spams I received — I’m showing it as “view” html rather than as ASCII text like I usually do because most email users now default to html view as opposed to text. (Big mistake!)
As you can see from this example, hovering over the link reveals the real target URL down in the status bar at the bottom of your browser window. Checking that particular spam reveals this link doesn’t go to the App store, but to the Czech Republic.
This one goes to Moscow Russia.
This one actually goes to a ‘local’ address in the U.S., and is a GoDaddy cybercrime link. So even if you don’t look up the address, you should know that if it were a legitimate link, it would go to the Apple App store. So if it’s not your trusted app store, just don’t go there.
If you’re interested in finding out who is trying to scam you, then right-click (cntrl/click) on the link and select “copy link” — then direct your browser to : http://samspade.org/ and paste in the URL. You’ll need to edit it to the pure URL, just the first word, the dot, and the extension com, org, biz, or what ever. If you see an extension like dot-ru, dot-pk, dot-ro, or others, that’s an immediate warning that this is from a criminal and NOT Apple.
Always protect yourself at all times — and the best way to do that is to develop the habit of looking at domains before you click, and being aware of where you are going each time you intend to click. Adopt a “Look before Clicking” policy until it becomes automatic.
Thanks for reading…
Editor / Publisher: InfoManager
