Phishing Scam

Roughly about a month, I submitted my own story to Apple's Switch campaign. Its a place to "share your story" about switching to Mac. Anyway, three days ago, I received this email:

From: Apple Apple [**removed**@mac.com]
Subject: Thanks for writing in . . .
Date: March 28, 2005 11:10:51 AM EST
To: Apple Apple [**removed**@mac.com]

Hello.

My name is Justin, and I'm contacting you on behalf of Apple regarding the submission you made to apple.com. We were excited to receive your "new-to-Mac" story, and appreciate the time you took to let us know how you're doing.

Over the next week or so, I am conducting some follow-up phone interviews, and I am wondering if you would be interested in participating. If so, please write back letting me know how and when to contact you.

Thanks for your help.

Sincerely,
Justin **Removed**

I was thrilled to hear that Apple wanted to talk to me about my submission but something about the message bothered me. I just couldn't put my finger on it. Part of me didn't want to be further contacted or bothered. Another part of me didn't want to give out my phone number over email. Yet another part of me questioned the validity of the message. So I kept it in my inbox and let the idea stew for awhile. This morning, I saw the email and decided to look at it again. The following are the clues that I saw that made me believe that this truly is a phishing scam and not legitimate:

• The email address is from a public domain. Apple employees use @apple.com. Only dotMac subscribers use @mac.com
• No job title
• No contact information
• The content is a form letter... without my name
• My email address was not in the TO: field
• No way to contact the company
• No evidence to backup his claim that he is working for Apple
• Originating IP address [69.203.7.147] wasn't an Apple block IP address.

In any event, I decided it was truly a phishing scam but I wrote him back anyway. Here's my response

From: Me
Subject: Re: Thanks for writing in . . .
Date: March 31, 2005 10:55:43 AM EST
To: Apple Apple [**removed**@mac.com]

How many people actually fall for this phishing scam? Kudos to you, you had be believing it for awhile until I realized that @mac.com was for dotMac and not Apple employees.

Take Care,
Dave

As you can imagine, I'm excited to get his response. I always enjoy talking with douchebag low-lifes who survive on the gullibility of good, trusting people. Thankfully, I'm not a soccer mom, so I don't have the sudden urge to contact the local media, form a coalition to end phishing, and create a political firestorm a la Sheila Broslofski. Instead, I just reported the scam to my Gmail who already had a "Report phishing" option on the email. Thanks Google.