Q: Received email from icloud customer support

Whether it's bogus rather depends on the address its sent from and its contents. You could post it here for us to examine, and if you can include the long header that would help, but go through it carefully and remove your own email address before doing this (it may appear in several places in the long header).

However if you are an ex-MobileMe subscriber then it could be related to that. MobileMe subscribers who migrated to iCloud received complimentary extra storage up until September 30 2013. This has now expired. If you have less than 5GB data in iCloud then your storage simply reverts to 5GB.

However if you have more than 5GB data, Backup, Documents and Mail will stop working until you either delete sufficient data to bring you within 5GB or purchase additional storage.

For instructions on purchasing additional storage please see

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4874

For help in reducing your iCloud data please see

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4847

That sounds very dubious. The sender's address would be the giveaway - it's probably not an apple.com address. A genuine message would come from something at @me.com (as the notification about the expiry of the free storage did) and would have been addressed to you by name, not 'Dear User'.

In any case, if you have exceeded your limit your email won't work; so if it is working that is final proof. You were right not to click on the link.

You can report such emails to Apple:  I quote:

'...if you do receive an email that arouses your suspicions, select all the text in the message and use the Forward as Attachment command in the Message menu in Mac OS X Mail or the Action menu in Outlook to send it to reportphishing@apple.com. This will provide us with information that can be useful to our legal department and outside law enforcement, and we'll be grateful for your help. Like crime in general, phishing can't be totally stamped out, but it can be fought.'

I received the same email twice today, and the reply address says svengoern@aol.com which is not a valid iCloud email address I guess. Besides the links from the page the email links to don't work:

http://cloudiservicswaesaywrrsjna2014.bugs3.com/iCloudusers2014.html

That's definitely a phishing attempt and you should bin it. You could report it to Apple if you want - forward it as an attachment to abuse@icloud.com

More information in this Apple Tech Note:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4933

I recd similar email yesterday morn - and was stupid in I went in to link - signed in with my apple id and password - and then noticed the email address was from aol.com. Now I cant get email. It appears i can send, but not receive. I tried a test email to myself and didnt receive. What can I do now?  This is a disaster - as my business depends on this. Thanks for ANY help on what to do now.

It's unlikely that unauthorised access would block email in one direction only - it would be more likely either to lock you out or to have no immediate effect (what they want is access to your personal data in the hope of stealing from you one way or another - they have no interest in blocking your email). You should certainly change your password to something strong, and you should do it now, not tomorrow.

If you can't receive iCloud email you could dry unchecking Mail in System Preferences>iCloud and re-checking it; you should also check whether you can access your mail at http://icloud.com

Thank you SO much - I will change password immediately. I will followup on yoru other advice as well.

I HAVE SO MUCH GRATITDE AND APPRECIATION FOR YOUR FOLLOWUP...... AND I am trying not to panic.

Thanks again!!!!!    Just learned a hard lesson too.......ugh.

This whole discussion has helped me.  I have received a couple of these emails, and I ALMOST clicked on the "click here" button and then thought better of it.  After reading this discussion, I just trashed it, and identified it as Junk mail.

Thanks!    

Hi Roger,

Here's the message I received from "iCloud Customer Care":

• Dear User,
• 
  
• Your E-mail account has exceeded its limit
• UPDATE HERE
• 
  
• Thanks.

Looks like a phishing expedition to me. The sender's address is bedoohtwo@aol.com

Definitely phishing - look at the address the 'Update here' links to - the domain is bugs3.com which is registered by GoDaddy and has their 'domain by proxy' service masking the owner's name. Bin it.

Thanks, Roger. Much appreciated!

What should you do if you clicked on UPDATE HERE?  Nothing appeared to happen, it acted like it tried to load, and then stalled out, so I shut it and deleted the message.  How do I find out what damage is done, or is there not a way?  Thanks for any help with this.