When you"re a celebrity or a high profile citizen, it"s not uncommon to be targeted by selfish individuals looking to make a dollar at your expense. It"s possible that Steve Jobs has fallen victim to a phishing scam that may have given access to his Amazon account.
CultofMac.com is reporting that they have been contacted by a phishing artist who managed to get into Steve Jobs" Amazon account by claiming to have "sent Jobs a phony but official-looking email that tricked him into logging onto a fake Amazon.com website".
Like any greedy individual, the phishing artist wants to sell the details of what items Jobs has purchased, which he claims to be over 20,000 items over the last 10 years, or about 5 items a day.
The phishing artist goes by the name of orin0co, and claims neither Jobs nor Amazon knew of the intrusion because he didn"t change the password on the account. The phishing attack was a well-crafted email that "instead of spamming millions with scattershot email scams, ...targeted high-worth corporate executives with cleverly-crafted emails full of personal details. The executives received messages that appeared to come from the Better Business Bureau, Internal Revenue Service, or Federal Trade Commission, among others."
Even if this turns out to be a hoax, it"s a good reminder to keep strong and secure passwords. Use a variation of numbers, letters and symbols when possible and don"t keep the same password for every site.