Apple’s popularity makes it an inevitable target for scam emails. This one currently doing the rounds is a fairly obvious fake, not least because it asks people to fill in an attached HTML form.
The aim of this scam is obvious: to collect your credit card and other personal details. I wasn’t going to risk clicking the attachment, but an analysis by Sophos reveals it asks for your credit card details and even your mother’s maiden name — a sure sign of identity theft.
Apart from the inherent dodginess of an attached HTML document, there are plenty of other signs that this clearly isn’t a genuine offer:
- If Apple was rewarding “long-term customers”, the message would be addressed to an individual by name, not to “Apple customer”.
- There are many grammatical errors (“your loyalty for our products made you eligible for buying”).
- The rudimentary attempt at geo-targeting by putting prices in Australian dollars is entirely undermined by the non-standard formatting (“9 AU$” is a truly odd way of putting it).
If you’re looking for an actual Apple saving, iTunes cards go on sale regularly. Messages like this go straight into your email trash (presuming your spam filters didn’t put them there already).
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