Wednesday 21 May 2008

iTunes Phishing Scam


Macworld are reporting that iTunes users are the targets of a new phishing scam.

Phishers have targeted users of Apple's iTunes music store with sophisticated identity theft attacks for the first time, a security company said Tuesday.

People began receiving spammed messages Monday telling them that they must correct a problem with their iTunes account, said Andrew Lochart, an executive with email security vendor Proofpoint.

A link in the spam leads to a site posing as an iTunes billing update page; that phony page asks for information including credit card number and security code, Social Security number and mother's maiden name.

The theft attempt is a new twist on the usual phishing attack, said Lochart. "We've gotten used to seeing the usual companies and brands attacked," he said, "like PayPal, eBay and Citibank. But we've never seen Apple as the target."

I received one of these emails myself on Monday. It arrived shortly after I placed an order on iTunes for a TV Show, House, and I initially thought it was legitimate. However a quick look at the url's in the email told me that this was a scam. For those interested I gave advice on spotting phishing scams in an article here.

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