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Usually with these of types of scams there's a phishing link inside the email. However, there are no clickable links in this email and appleid.apple.com is an official Apple site.

In between the regular English characters there are letters and numbers scattered around with a font size of 0 and a transparent colour. There are also a couple of HTML tags with apparently random text. Example of the HTML code:

Th<font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>6</font>e<font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>n</font> <font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>c</font>f<!xklyv>o<font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>4</font>l<font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>k</font>l<!z5y08>o<font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>4</font>w<font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>a</font>i<!g>ng <font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>h</font>c<font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>y</font>h<font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>0</font>a<font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>d</font>n<font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>5</font>ge<!ctubo>s to<font style='color:transparent;font-size:0px'>i</font> <!vg>yo

The body of the text actually looks like the following: if y0o0ua td5id 2nao5t bmakpe thebs0ev ch5angmes momrh ipfc you bvelsieveh ban unauthorised9 uperson9 dhas zaccesuse9d dymo2u2r accouxnsth

How does this phishing email work? Does something happen just by opening the email?

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2 Answers 2

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This looks like a preliminary work for a phishing run.

You may not believe this, but phishing software, lists, networks of bots etc. are actually for sale if you look in the right places.

So we might be looking at a wannabe phisher that has set up his new kewl toyz and attempted to do a phishing run. But something went wrong, some tokens remained untouched (e.g. {{email}} which should clearly have been your email) and the email body is probably still the equivalent of a Lorem Ipsum.

And there's no clickable link.

I saw some specimens with similar flaws, even if not identical to yours, years ago.

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Apart from the terrible spelling and non formatted fields, still be careful as people can replicate any webpage quite easily.

It may LOOK like the official site, but may just be an identical layout, however when logging in may record your details (ie. password).

However, LSerni seems to be correct in that this was an a amateur that failed.

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    The domain name apple.com is owned by Apple, hence it is certain the website is official without even visiting it.
    – Anastasia
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 0:16
  • Thanks for the information, must have just been a major fail.
    – Mattcul
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 1:11
  • You probably already checked this, but I would think it's possible the link could point somewhere different than it displays in the email (but maybe email clients check this automatically). For example: <a href="notapple.com">apple.com</a>
    – Steve
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 5:38
  • It's styled as a link but it's not actually clickable.
    – Anastasia
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 10:00

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