I checked the suspicious email and at first glance, it looked legit. The email address used was store[at]itunes[dot]com and the message looked like a real iTunes receipt.

I compared it with a real iTunes receipt I previously received and found a few discrepancies:

Fake iTunes Receipt
Sender: iTunes
Email Address: store[at]itunes[dot]com
Billed To: email address
Billed To: “Credit card”

Real iTunes Receipt
Sender: iTunes Store
Email Address: do_not_reply[at]itunes[dot]com
Billed To: email address, full name, billing address (street, state, zip code)
Billed To: Credit card type – MasterCard, VISA, etc. with last 4 digits.

I also checked the email headers of both the real and fake iTunes receipts and saw that the data (Return Path, Received, Received-SPF, Authentication-Results, DKIM-Signature, etc.) didn’t match up. I also noticed that the fake email had these strange characters “•” at the bottom of the email.

The last thing I checked were the links embedded on the email. Btw, I did it by hovering the mouse over the links, not clicking on the links. Below are links and URLs they’re pointing to:

Cancel Order, Report a Problem links – slavodelic[dot]com/pod/check[dot]php

View\Download link – http://cpslex[dot]com/images/download[dot]jpg[dot]exe

Purchase History link – http://cpslex[dot]com/images/history[dot]pdf[dot]exe

As you can see, the URLs were pointing to a PHP page and a couple executable files. With that, it’s safe to say that the fake iTunes receipt email was not just an ordinary spam or phishing email but a malicious email that intended to trick users into installing a trojan horse virus on their computers.

People who send these type of emails use scare tactics to trick users to provide their account names/passwords, click on links, install attachments, etc. If an unsuspecting person got duped into thinking that this was a real iTunes receipt and that person clicked on any of the embedded links, their computer would’ve been compromised. Their personal information could be stolen, credit cards & bank accounts breached and their computer could be used as a “bot” for a botnet.

If you ever come across the same type of email, make sure that you DON’T click on any of the links and/or DON’T download/install any of the attachments. DELETE the email and warn your family and friends about it.

Anybody else got these fake iTunes receipt emails?

Just want to share and inform other WordPress users who use the WordPress for iOS app that there’s a new update available – version 2.9.1 which was released yesterday. This version is a bug fix update and at the same time contains the following changes – stability improvements, crash fixes and an improved read speed & navigation (Next/Previous Read item navigation added) on WordPress.com.

In case you don’t have version 2.9 and are still using an older version of WordPress for iOS, here are some of the new features and improvements from previous versions:

New Features:

• A Feature-Rich Content Editor – Now you can easily format text, make bulleted lists, create links, and do all kinds of other fancy stuff.
• Full Screen Editing – No more teeny-weeny content editor — now you can view more text at a time while you post on the go.
• Reading Made Easy – Keeping track of your favorite blogs has never been easier. Browse all the latest posts on blogs you follow in one place, right from your iPhone.

Updated Features:

• Quick Photo will now use the post format for images (if your theme supports it).
• You can now post pictures that you’ve already taken with Quick Photo.
• Your stats referrer links and comment links can now be opened right from this app.

NOTE: WordPress for iOS 2.9+ requires iOS 4.0 or later and is compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

I’ve upgraded the app on my iPhone 4 running iOS 5 and everything seems to be working fine – no bugs, crashes or any issues whatsoever. Anybody else using WordPress for iOS 2.9.1?

WordPress for iOS 2.9.1 is now available on iTunes or via the App Store.

Here’s the app description on iTunes:

Google+ for mobile makes sharing the right things with the right people a lot simpler. Huddle lets you send super-fast messages to the people you care about most. And no matter where you are, the stream lets you stay in the loop about what your friends are sharing and where they’re checking in.

Features:

• Circles
• Stream
• Check-ins
• Huddle

Screenshots:

I downloaded/installed and have tried all the different features and options on the new Google+ iOS app and I really like it because if has all the basic/necessary features. There are a couple things I like about the app. First, it uses the iPhone’s built-in notifcation system and everytime there’s a new notification – you get notified on the screen and it also gets displayed on the Google+ app icon. Second, posts only show the first two comments and other comments are hidden which saves me time from scrolling to view other posts.

However, it would be nice if it also had some of the features that are available to the desktop version like – Sparks, the option to Share a post and Hangouts for those who own smartphones or mobile device that have dual cameras. Hopefully the Google+ team would add those features in the next release or update of the app.

The Google+ iOS app is compatible with iPhone 3G, 3GS & iPhone 4 and requires iOS 4.0+.

Anyone installed and tried the Google+ iPhone app? How do you like it? Which one would you prefer to use – the desktop version or the iPhone app? What other features and options would you like to see added to the Google+ iPhone app? Please share your thoughts.

After two months of squashing bugs and adding new features, the WordPress dev team has finally released WordPress for iOS 2.8.

From the WordPress for iOS blog:

It’s been in the works for about two months, and we hope you agree with us that it was worth the wait. This is the first app version in a long time where we’re actually adding features, previously we’ve been 100% focused on improving stability, error messages, and help. While these efforts will continue indefinitely, we now feel like the app is stable enough to start adding some long-awaited features.

New features added to WordPress 2.8:

• Quick Photo – this feature allows the user to take a picture from their mobile device and immediately blog about it. It is the first feature that is “action-centric”, allows the users to perform a specific task first and pick a blog second. Useful if you have several blogs.
• Stats – users can now check blog statistics on the WordPress for iOS app, which is available to WordPress.com users and made available to self-hosted WordPress blog owners thru Jetpack or the WordPress Stats plugin. Stats feature charts for daily, weekly and monthly pageviews as well as post views, referrers, search terms and clicks in the past 7 days.
• Localization – this new version of WordPress for iOS has added support for 10 languages (Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Hebrew, German, Dutch, French, and Croatian) and is now translatable. To help the WordPress team in translating WordPress iOS into your native language, visit the WordPress for iOS project

Screenshots:

WordPress for iOS 2.8 is now available on iTunes or via the App Store.

I upgraded the WordPress app on my iPhone to version 2.8 early this morning. The upgrade was smooth, no issues or crashes although I haven’t yet tried the new features – Quick Photo and Stats. Will update this post if I encounter any issues.

Anyone else upgraded to WordPress for iOS 2.8? What do you think of the bug fixes and new features? Have you encountered any issues or problems? Is this latest version of WordPress for iOS more stable than previous versions? Please share your thoughts.

WordPress released an update to the their iOS app last Wednesday – WordPress for iOS version 2.7. Found out about while I was checking and updating the apps on my iPhone. This latest update is focused to improve the app’s performance and reliability, it includes fixes for more than 100 bugs and 117 changes/improvements.

Aside from realibility updates, WordPress for iOS 2.7 includes some UI (user interface) improvements like “Pull to refresh“, which allows the user to refresh the page by just simply pulling it down until the arrow flips around and releasing it. Another one is a redesigned Post Editor interface that makes it easier for users to write/edit posts. I like the new Post settings, Preview and View/Add media attachments icons at the bottom of the Post Editor because it looks cleaner, more organized and less cramped. Btw, with WordPress for iOS 2.7, you can now upload multiple media objects at once.

WordPress for iOS 2.7 is now available on iTunes or via the App Store.

Anyone using WordPress for iOS 2.7? What do you think of the bug fixes and new improvements? Have you encountered any issues or problems? Is this latest version of WordPress for iOS more stable than previous versions? Please share your thoughts.