Is this email fake?

Fake. Just the fact it's going back to some loser at a campus dorm tells you that.

Every time I place an order with Apple, any confirmation that I get mentions me by my name in it. It is indeed fake.

Extra info if you want to help get this jerk arrested for running a scam. The address does indeed resolve to Cornell University.

Domain Name: CORNELL.EDU

Registrant:

Cornell University

Cornell Information Technologies

Network Operations Center 729 Rhodes Hall

Ithaca, NY 14853

UNITED STATES

Administrative Contact:

Cornell Information Technologies

Cornell Information Technologies

Cornell University

729 Rhodes Hall

Ithaca, NY 14853

UNITED STATES

+1-607-255-5500

noc@cornell.edu

Technical Contact:

Daniel Eckstrom

Cornell Information Technologies

Cornell University

731 Rhodes Hall

Ithaca, NY 14853

UNITED STATES

+1-607-255-5902

de10@cornell.edu

They don't offer a toll free number, but you can ask for the admin staff and let them know you received an email from someone through their email server running an illegal scam operation. May have come from inside the campus, or from the user's home if they live close enough to commute and accessed their assigned email account from there.

Either way, the university will know who sab333 is assigned to and can take action from there. Save the email in case they ask you to forward it to them for confirmation of such illegal activity.

Apple will never, ever, send out an email with a generic "Dear Apple Customer" salutation. You will always be addressed by name.

You can call Apple's Customer Service and give them that supposed reservation number. I can almost 100% guarantee you they will not have such a number on record.

iforgot.apple.com and buyiphone2.apple.com are indeed both owned by Apple. They also resolves to Apple in a DNS search. However, that only proves the person who sent the email stuck in legitimate links.

Hello elamparo,

I'm very skeptical that a student at Cornell university would be running a scam like this, and under his own e-mail no less. One would think that a Cornell student could afford to buy his own phones and would be smart enough not to hack under his own name. I think it is far more likely that Apple did not hire Cornell students to run its pre-ordering system. It got overloaded and started recycling web sessions. You accidentally wound up with some one else's HTTP connection. This certainly wouldn't be the first time a bug like this happened on an Apple server.

You should be able to check the status of your order here: http://www.apple.com/shop/help/viewing_changing_orders

If not, you can call Apple directly.

What phone number did you call? From the email? From somewhere here on apple.com domain?

The number in the email, 1 800 MY-APPLE appears to be valid: http://www.apple.com/contact/

Yes.

Kurt posted a couple from his detective work too. (? Cornell.edu ?)

Is it not unusual for Apple NOT to address one by NAME?

More than enough funkiness for my skeptical side

What address resolves to Cornell? The domain in the link, https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid?&language=US-EN&app_id=2083&pr s_account_nm=sab333%40cornell.edu&newWin… is apple.com. The link provided by the OP goes to Apple's web site. The login box is pre-populated with an email address at Cornell. I suspect this email address is the OP's since the link was originated by him to retrieve a forgotten password.

Hi Bob,

A bit of a misinterpretation on my part. The second link in the initial post takes you to Apple's legitimate "I forgot" site. But it automatically fills in sab333@cornell.edu as the email address you want to recover an ID for. It doesn't belong to the OP. So it's a, "Why is it there?" kind of thing.

How do you know it is not an email address belonging to the OP or someone else's account that the OP used to place the reservation? Did I miss something? Sorry, I did miss something. The OP says he does not recognize the ID email address. Maybe he reserved from someone elses computer which was logged in with the unknown ID.

If email is unknown to you, the only conclusion one can make is that Apple "got its wires crossed" somehow.

It is not unheard of... but rare.

When *I* choose the first link, I am presented with a login page...

Did you enter YOUR OWN Apple ID credentials? (email addy + password)

When I try it, I get an error

We’re sorry. We can’t find your reservation. Please verify your information and try again.

iForgot link on that page takes me to the page I would expect to see = BLANK