According to this email, your Apple ID is about to be removed from iCloud and all Apple services. The message claims that Apple needs to ‘fully verify’ your Apple ID to ‘comply with mandatory European Union (EU) legislation and to confirm your identity’. It requests that you click a link to complete the verification and save your account from cancellation.
However, the email is not from Apple. Instead, it is a phishing scam designed to trick you into divulging a large amount of your personal and financial information to online criminals. If you click the link in the email, you will be taken to a fraudulent web page designed to emulate a genuine Apple site. The initial scam page asks you to login with your Apple ID email address and password. Subsequent pages on the site ask you to provide a great deal of information about yourself and your bank and credit card accounts as well as supply identifying information such as your SSN and driver’s licence number.
When you finish filling out the fake forms, you may receive a final message informing you that your Apple ID has been successfully verified.
Meanwhile, the scammers operating this phishing campaign can harvest all of the information you supplied and use it to hijack your Apple account, commit credit card and other types of financial fraud in your name, and steal your identity.
In a strange twist, the criminals who created this scam have attempted to thwart scam investigators. If you enter false data that includes words such as ‘scam’ into fields on the fake form, your browser will automatically redirect you to a preconfigured Google search for sickening and illegal pornography.
Apple customers are regularly targeted in phishing scams similar to this one. Be very cautious of any email that purports to be from Apple and asks you to click a link or open an attachment to verify your account or fix a supposed problem. It is always safest to login to your Apple account by entering the address into your browser’s address bar or via an official app.
EXAMPLE:
Subject: Apple & iCloud ID CancellationYour Apple ID [email address removed] is about to be removed from iCloud and
all Apple services.
Apple Account: [email address removed]
Support Reference: 88699654673434
To comply with mandatory European Union (EU) legislation and to confirm
your identity, we need to fully verify your Apple ID. In most cases we can
do this electronically without you having to visit an Apple Store as long
as all the information you have provided is correct. To complete this
online please continue to login below.
[Link removed]
—
Sincerely,
iCloud ID
Customer ID: 6567617
Last updated: January 21, 2016
First published: January 21, 2016
By Brett M. Christensen
About Hoax-Slayer
References
Phishing Scams – Anti-Phishing Information
Phishing Scam – ‘Final E-Mail Before Apple ID Suspended’
Apple KYC Validation Phishing Scam
Original Source : https://www.hoax-slayer.net/apple-icloud-id-cancellation-phishing-scam/