Apple + Security & Privacy

Phishing is not new. It’s usually financial institutions, PayPal and eBay who are misrepresented, with snazzy e-mails asking you to log into your account and “update your information.” But .Mac users and later MobileMe users have been targeted as well, as part of organized crime’s attempt to focus on the growing number of Mac users out there. Yet another MobileMe scam has been spotted, with bogus e-mails sent out asking MobileMe users to renew their subscriptions by clicking a link in an e-mail message.

The rule to remember is to never click a link in an e-mail message to log into any site where you give confidential information such as your credit card. Always type the URL manually, or use a bookmark that you made in your web browser. You can always spot the bogus URLs in e-mail messages by hovering your cursor over the link and waiting until a tooltip shows the real, hidden URL. You’ll notice that part of it may look real, but as you get to the end of the first part (before any slashes), you’ll see that it ends in something like .cn (China) or .ru (Russia).