Sometimes a spamming email shows up that really does impress me, one that has been created by someone who really knows how to spot spam and that they have designed to out-fox themselves and, of course, we send out warnings to users as soon as possible to mitigate the risk of these attacks.
In the current climate there are not so many of these, in fact the current crop is a bit weak, but nonetheless we shall go through a few basic steps for detecting emails that are not telling you the trutgh about their origins.
The most common emails are scamming you for passwords, such as the classic 'Apple' email:
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Update your account when you're ready.
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Get help online
Visit Apple Support to learn more about your product, download software updates, and much more.
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copyright 2016 Apple Inc.
All Rights Reserved / Privacy Policy / Support / Give us feedback
On behalf of Apple Distribution International
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So first of all, let us verify the domain name of the link on the page. We shall do this by hovering our mouse arrow over the link and see what shows up:
Well well, the domain appears to be 3sinfo.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ro which appears to be an upload folder on some unknown server with a .net extension. What is happening here is that the link has been set to display the text of the Apple ID website but actually links to 3sinfo.net - this is an immideiate sign of ingenuine intention and so this email cannot be trusted. The best thing to do is to delete this email and ignore its messages as there is undoubtedly no issue with your APple account and any attempt to use your account will be defended by Apple anyway and if someone has your password there is no way Apple would easily know that it was not you. These type of emails are the source of all two factor authentication that we now endure when contacting Apple involving mobile text messages and iPad PINs etc.