Phishers want your Apple gift card

Apple has received a lot of attention lately: the lost iPhone, the Apple vs Adobe bickering about Flash, but it was mostly the release of the iPad and its amazing popularity that made Apple truly a household name.

It is no wonder then that phishers and scammers of all sorts are trying to spoof the brand for their own malicious purposes. The latest of the series of Apple-related scams was documented by Symantec, and it involves a phishing site for checking Apple gift cards.

Typically, an email arrives to the potential victims, in which a link that supposedly takes them to a page where they can check the balance amount for their Apple gift cards is provided.

If the recipients click on the link, they are taken to the phishing site that asks them for the the gift card number and the pin number. After they have done so and have clicked on the “Check balance” button, an error message stating that the enquiry cannot currently be processed is returned, along with the suggestion that they should contact customer care to check the balance (a valid, legitimate phone number is provided).

In the meantime, the numbers you entered are now in the hands of the criminals, and they can easily shop with the money on the balance.

According to Symantec, the site was hosted on a domain name that is very similar to the legitimate one (so-called typosquatting), and on servers in the U.S.