Lately all has been quiet in regards to Apple’s MobileMe service and shady activities. In the past we’ve told you about a few separate cases of phishing scams going around. Well today we’ve heard that Oscar nominated actress, Salma Hayek’s account has been hacked.
Honestly, this is something that is really not that difficult to do, especially depending on how much information you have about a person. Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! account was famously hacked last year using information from Wikipedia, as have several other celebrities.
In this particular case, all that was needed was Salma’s birthday and the answer to her security question which just happened to be “What is my favorite character?”. Just in case you were wondering what the answer was, it was “Frida” which was Hayek’s most popular role in a movie. (And yes, I’m sure it is now something a bit tougher to figure out so don’t bother trying.) In the end, that is all of the information that was needed to gain access to all of her emails, calendar information, etc…
Moral of this story, choose your security questions and answers wisely… And if you’re well known, make up a fake set of answers, memorize them thoroughly, and don’t tell anyone else.
[Via Macworld]
Apple, via their MobileMe News blog, has just announced Live Chat Support 24/7:
We’re pleased to announce that English language Live Chat support is now available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you encounter an issue while using MobileMe and would like to address it immediately, simply go to MobileMe support. Click on the topics at the bottom left of the page to see if your question has already been answered. If it’s not, click the Chat Now button to initiate a realtime help session with a MobileMe support agent.
If you have cause to try it out, let us know how it works for you.
We’ve now gotten a few reports and some screenshots of yet more new functionality in iPhone 3.0 Beta 3.
First is “merge”. If you already have bookmarks, contacts, or other data on your iPhone (for example, if you synced it over via iTunes) and you enable MobileMe, a menu will slide up asking if you want to merge the data, not merge (i.e. replace), or cancel.
Next are “Publishing to MobileMe”, which shows a direct upload status bar, and new options to view published items on MobileMe, or “tell a friend” (via MMS?).
More screenshots after the break, and for a far more detailed look at the beta releases so far, including WiFi Auto-Join also posted today, check out our massive iPhone 3.0 walkthrough.
Before MobileMe there was .Mac, and before there was iWeb, there was .Mac HomePage. Well, good thing the latter has been replaced ’cause Apple is officially declaring them EOL (end of life) come July 7. After that date, whatever is there will remain there forever (or until Apple gets tired of it and yanks them down). So get with converting to iWeb or rolling yourself something custom.
Full text of the mailing after the break…
Read the rest of this entry »
BGR, who claims to have chanced upon the iPhone OS 3.0 developers beta via shinobi-affiliated sources, also came across an interesting looking new setting in the MobileMe account page:
Find my iPhone
They wonder allowed if this is a new GPS locate feature for iPhone (like an iPhone low-jack). That would be a very cool update to MobileMe indeed, though limiting it to MobileMe wouldn’t be anywhere near as cool.
Stealing credit card information is big business so perhaps it should come as no surprise that we’re seeing so many phishing attacks targeted at even niche services like MobileMe. We’ve reported on a bunch of them already, and this latest one is just more of the same.
If you get an email warning you about the status of your account, asking you to verify billing info, or basically asking you anything at all, NEVER click on the link. Always launch your web browser and type in the main URL by hand (i.e. don’t click on the email’s “Login” button, go to Firefox or Safari and type in “http://www.me.com/”). (And yes, DNS can be cache poisoned and localhosts can be over-written, but depending how valuable a target you are and how much time you want to invest in proofing yourself, manually entering URLs is a good compromise between convenience and security.
Apple Insider has all the details for those who want them. Surf safe!
Updated: Apple’s MobileMe News talks updates:
We’ve recently made improvements to the MobileMe web applications, including performance enhancements for MobileMe Calendar. In addition the MobileMe login page now also includes news information. See this support article for additional details.
Fiendmish in the comments also points us to Apple’s Knowledge Base article on the subject. Thanks!
Original: Login to MobileMe’s WebApp yet today? Well if you have, you’ve seen what we’ve seen — Apple put a fresh coat of paint to the front login page, shuffling the big icons off to the side and clearing some space for a little marketing front and center.
I like the new look, but I can’t tell yet if there’s anything changed under the covers? File sharing was the last update, anyone see anything else?
How you doing, MobileMe? For weeks, months even, you don’t call, you don’t write, then Microsoft’s My Phone moves into the fixer-upper down the street, and Google Sync starts to cozy up to us, and now you’re back with the 3rd news item in just over a week?
This time it’s a tip on how to share multiple files using the new iDisk File Sharing feature we linked to earlier. Here’s the skinny:
- Select the files or folders you want to share. (To select multiple files hold down the Command key on a Mac or the Control key on a PC as you click on each one.)
- Use the Actions menu via the Gear icon in the Toolbar, and select Compress items. This will automatically create a single compressed file named Archive.zip that contains your files or folders.
- Share Archive.zip file just as you would any other iDisk file. (Before you share it, you can change the “Archive” part of the name to something more descriptive, but keep the .zip extension so the receiver’s computer will know to decompress the files when the receiver opens it.)
Of course, you could likely just archive/zip the files prior to engaging MobileMe, but it’s so nice Apple has expressed some interest. Now how about moving that iDisk love over to the iPhone? You know, there are some mobile features me still want there as well..
When Phil Schiller first demonstrated MobileMe at WWDC 2008, one of the features we instantly wanted immediately was the drop-dead simple method for sharing large files via iDisk and email. But the MobileMe launch came and went (and broke down, and went back up), with nary a large file shared between anyone. Until now.
Maybe it’s the pressure of Google’s new, free sync service or Microsoft’s My Phone, or maybe Apple’s engineers finally got it rock-solid. All we know is we’re going to send us some big blobs of data starting today. Apple’s MobileMe News has the details:
We’re pleased to announce that you can now use your MobileMe iDisk to share files with others simply and easily. Instead of attaching a large document to an email and hoping it’s not too big to be received, you can place the file in your iDisk and use the new Share File command in the iDisk web app. It lets you send your friends, family, or colleagues a link they can click to download the file directly. You can password protect the link if you choose to and even set how long it will be available.
They’ve even posted a tutorial! So, is this too little, too late for anyone? Or does it suddenly make MobileMe’s yearly fee a bit of a better deal?
September was the last time we saw some malicious attacks on MobileMe subscribers. Well the scammers are at it again, trying to take advantage of Apple’s MobileMe subscribers. A Gizmodo reader claims to have gotten the email shown above.
If you then click the fake “Login” button you will be directed to a website the scammers have set up — to look like Apple’s web site — asking for your credit card information. It is safe to say, delete this email if you happen to find it in your inbox.
[Via Gizmodo]
