It may be nearly Christmas, but that isn’t stopping the bad guys from trying to rip us all off, and the latest victim is Apple’s MobileMe service.
The phishing method is a familiar one – send an email to a few thousand people, ask them for their login credentials and hope that some fall for it. It’s low-tech, but it unfortunately works more often than you would think.
As The Mac Observer writes, customers of Apple’s MobileMe service are the latest to receive such phishing emails, with recipients being warned that their iDisks have been found to contain a virus. The way to get rid? Email off your login details, obviously…
As is always the case with these things, the best thing to do is simply delete the email and go about your business. DO NOT reply to it, even though the copyright logo and associated jargon may make you think the whole thing is legit. It isn’t. Apple, nor any other entity worth its salt will ever ask for your login details in an email, and if they do, then they are probably up to no good anyway.
We’ve got the full email quoted below, so be on the lookout for anything that looks remotely similar to this. While the MobileMe variant is the one we are obviously most interested in, it is also worth noting that others are doing the rounds, including one claiming to be from Frontier Communications.
“Dear MobileMe Subscriber,
=================Virus Notification
A DGTFX Virus has been detected in your MobileMe folders. Your email account has to be upgraded to our new Secured DGTFX anti-virus 2011 version to prevent damages to our web mail log and to your important files. Click your reply tab, Fill the columns below and send back to us or your email account will be terminated to avoid spread of the virus.
Email:
User name:
Password:
Reconfirm Password:Note that your password will be encrypted with 1024-bit RSA keys for your password safety.
All MobileMe User Should Reply Now !!!
Failure to do this will immediately render your Web-email address deactivated from our database.
Thank you for your co-operation.Warning Code :ID67565434
© Copyright 2011 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.”
Be careful folks, it’s a dangerous world out there!