MobileMe help, billing info, phishing warning from Apple

Apple updated and added knowledge base articles to help MobleMe users understand MobileMe billing, and to answer questions about emails from Apple regarding MobileMe.

The first article will help you understand what you need to do if you receive an email from Apple about your Mobile account, and how to get help resolving any issues. The topics are:

Renewing or canceling your account
Updating your credit card information
Mail storage limit notification
iDisk storage limit notification
Viewing a friend’s movies or albums in MobileMe Gallery

The second article explains how MobileMe billing works. Topics include:

Trial Accounts
What happens if your trial account expires
Members with automatic renewal
Members without automatic renewal set
What happens if your subscription expires

Also, an article on the Unofficial Apple Weblog warns of a phishing scheme targeting MobileMe subscribers. It warns against emails purportedly from Apple telling you that you need to update your credit card info. These emails come from “Apple-bills.com” which is NOT an Apple domain.

The site linked to in the phishing email was down as of the TUAW posting.

Beware of Phishermen

Apple posted a knowledge base article to help identify fraudulent “phishing” email. It explains how to identify the sender of a suspicious email, and how to make sure that a link on an email is actually going to where is says it is.

Additionally, the email greeting can be a giveaway. If it’s addressed to something generic, like “Dear Valued Customer”, or to your email address, Dear jimbob@xxxxx.com, it is not likely to be genuine.

If you use an email address to connect to your bank, for example, and you receive an email sent to a different address from that bank, it is not genuine. Normally you can check with companies and banks to see what email address you used when you registered.

If you get an email from a company, and it is not similar to emails you’ve received in the past, it’s a good idea to double-check. It may be genuine, but it’s a red flag.

Never send personal information via email. If a company needs something like this, they will send you to a secure website. Make sure that you are actually going to that company first, though.

MobileMe offers live chat support on their support site, if you have any questions. I’ve used it a few times, and found it to be very helpful.