Vintuitive

Watch out for more scam emails. Here’s one I received this morning pretending to be from Apple.

You’ll need to update your apple account

It appears I have been logged out of my apple account and to get back in I need to update my account. Hmmm…my “apple” account? I think they mean my “Apple” account.

Lets have a closer look at the contents of the email:

Don’t take the bait! Hover first

The unsuspecting recipient of this email would click on the ‘Update Now’ link, be taken to the scammer’s website, which probably looks identical to the Apple website, and enter their Apple ID and password.

By hovering the mouse cursor over the “Update now” link we can determine where the link would take us without actually clicking it. Doing so on this email reveals that the link doesn’t lead to www.apple.com. Instead, our browser would load up the intruder’s domain – www.gaminges.com, and to a javascript (“js”) folder. Potentially nasty.

Hovering over the link pops up the destination URL.

Identifying the sender

We can also determine who the sender is. Just click on the little downward pointing arrow to the right of the sender’s name and a drop down menu appears. And look at that – the sender’s domain is not apple.com but iapple.com.

Note that the domain of the sender is iapple.com

Dear Costumer, please update your account informations.

Though I do enjoy dressing up occasionally, I don’t think that is what the author of this email intended. Nor did they realise that the plural of “information” is… “information”.

Be on the lookout for emails like this arriving in your inbox. One day these scammers will learn proper grammar, making it less obvious.

Always remember though, don’t click on links without hovering over them to check them out first.