Are you an iTunes fan? Whether you use iTunes or not I bet you have received emails spouting your account has suspicious activity and you must log in or your account will be suspended. Whether Apple emails clients in this fashion or not, it is important to remember that there are dangerous people out there that are actually trying to gain access to your iTunes, and many other online accounts... including Facebook. BUT, if you can remember a few easy rules, you can easily protect yourself from these potentially dangerous emails. First, always look at who the email is coming from. In the photo example, it shows apple@support. The domain support has nothing to do with Apple, so not sure why it is listed like that. This would be your first red flag. (Granted, for me, I dont use iTunes, so that was my first red flag.) Now look in the body of your email. Usually there is a link that takes you to the login page. When you take your mouse and roll over the link, a box should come up with the URL for that link. As you can see in the photo example, the link not only has nothing to do with Apple, but it doesnt match the address in the header (apple@support). What they do is put relevant words in the link to fool you into thinking it is legit. Here is the real link that email is sending you to: account.login.apple.rzone.blueferns/apple You see that they used account, login, and apple as part of the address so it looks real, right? Well, what you have to do is determine the actual domain name. The best way to do this is to find the , .net, .org, etc and the actual domain is directly in front of it. In this case, the domain is blueferns and NOT Apple. The words in front of the domain name are considered subdomains. Any time you have a URL with other words in front of the domain and there is no www then you are looking at a subdomain. So somewhere on this blueferns domain, they have created a multi-level subdomain so they could use key words in hopes to trick you into clicking on the link. Once you click on the link, chances are they have a login that looks similar to iTunes. Once you input that info, they have your iTunes login. If that was not their ultimate goal, you could also be subjected to a virus or malware. The best thing to remember is if you think something is from your bank or other well known company then any links in that email should go back to that company. So, if you have an email from your bank, when you roll over that link, the domain name should match the web address of your bank. If it doesnt match, then do not click on it. NOTE: All email clients are different. Not all will show you the URL for a link. For example, look at image #2 to see an example of how you find the URL for links using Gmail. Other email clients and online email services may be slightly different. But, if you are using a good email client, you should be able to find this info without clicking on the link.
Posted on: Fri, 13 Jun 2014 20:15:16 +0000
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