There are a lot of scams out there now that we get through our e-mails that seem like they are coming from a legitimate company like Apple. Who hasn’t heard of Apple right? I’ve received those myself and the first time I got one in my inbox I was a bit surprised because I don’t use any Apple products so why am I getting mail from them. The worst part is, it was a receipt for the purchase of a download that I KNOW I didn’t buy.

What is going on? I ignored the first one, two and even the third one, but then when the forth one came in I was a bit more curious. I did a bit more investigating to find out why I’m receiving all of these receipts for products I didn’t buy.  This is when I confirmed that these e-mails were indeed a scam and the e-mails were not from Apple at all.

I’m going to show you a copy of a receipt that was received recently from a client that wondered the same as I did. Is this legit, is someone buying something from iTunes using my credit information or is this a scam?  It is a scam and you’ll see how you can tell in the images below.

When you look at this receipt, everything seems in order according to the information. The links in the e-mail all look like they are connected to Apple. They have the Apple.com website url’s in them.  Tip: Never click on a link in an e-mail until you do this one thing  first. Especially if you did not buy or order anything from that company.
They are link baiting you. Which means all they want you to do is click a link to a website you trust, but they are really having you click to a website that is either a spam message selling something else or they are trying to add  a virus or malware to your computer.

Here is the example I mentioned earlier of an Apple receipt.

Take a look at the first red arrow on the receipt. It certainly looks like an Apple website link doesn’t it?  How you know that it isn’t an Apple website link is you take your mouse and hover over the legitimate looking website link and at the bottom of your screen (every computer is different where they show this) appears the real website address that you would actually go to if you clicked that link. Notice the red arrow at the bottom of the receipt, the little faded looking  website url doesn’t have anything in it that links to Apple.
The link actually goes to a website url  ihavethis0.  When I hovered over all of the links they lead to that same web address. 

Sometimes you will find a legit website url in the message to try and build your confident,  check them all if you at all tempted to click any of the links in the e-mail. If you are still unsure and you are worried that someone did hack into your account, log in directly from your computer browser and check your account. This charge would be in your account. Do not login using a link from an e-mail, login from a browser on your computer or device in a new browser window.
You are not the first this has happened to and you won’t be the last and you’ll likely get more of them.

Try and mark these messages as spam so hopefully you don’t get any more from this particular person/company.

People will try to trick you in many ways to click a link in an e-mail or on the web. Do this one trick and it will help save you some possible hacks into your computer or vicious malware in your computer. This trick also works on websites too if you are tempted to click on a link, but not sure if you should or where it will lead you.

I hope you’ve found this helpful and please, share this with your friends or family to help them stay protected. There are so many things we need to learn and continue to learn when it comes to the internet or social media and e-mails. I was happy that my client asked for help first instead of clicking anything in the e-mail.
Better to be safe than sorry, right?