I Teach People

Fake Apple Web Site

The Real Apple Store

I have received two emails in the past 24 hours from gmail accounts that have a link to this fake Apple web site advertising prices 80% off OEM. The prices are so incredibly low, it must be a scam. This could also be a phishing site, where scammers can get your credit card info.

How do you spot the fake sites?

To most regular Apple and Adobe customers it is obvious, but not for some people.

• First off, the email address where this was sent from was a gmail account, and it was cc’d to a yahoo account. Trust me, if Apple or Adobe were selling legit copies of their software, the emails would come directly from them, or they would come via an authorized re-seller. This email was quite convincing. It even had Apple’s Infinite Loop mailing address on the bottom of the email.
• If you go to Apple’s own web site, it’s called the Apple Store, not Soft Store.
• The menu bar at the top of the sites are totally different.
• The fonts are slightly different.

Students registered at any accredited educational institution can already get deep discounts on their software from all the major software publishers. Even continuing education students qualify for the discount. There is no need to purchase black market software.

Also, never click on links from an email sent to you from a suspicious email address. It could send you to a scammers web site. It’s always best to type the URL directly into your browser instead. Make sure your email program is set up so that you can see full email addresses of the senders. That makes it easier to spot the spammers and the fakes.

Remember, if it seems to good to be true, it probably is.