An imposter website of Apple.com has been doing the rounds. The fake website has been able to fool even the smartest of users on leading browsers like Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and opera. Like the original website, this website also asks you to download software, and also demands your account details or other personal information.



The fraud involves making use of certain tools that trick the browser into showing a website with strange/ foreign URL as something that is rather prominent and visited by multiple users. Google Chrome in its version 58 was able to spot this anomaly, but Mozilla and Opera couldn’t. One of the developers who had made a fake Apple.com voluntarily explained the whole process of the fraud.



Punnycode is the software that can make a URL with foreign characters appear to be something else. Therefore these browsers need to be advanced enough to not recognize the command given by Punnycode. In a recent discussion that was happening on Mozilla developer forum, the leading developers stated that now they would not change the default behavior of the browser if it encounters a Punnycode.

All the Chrome users are advised to make use of the latest version of the application to avoid being conned by any of these sites. For those using Firefox, enter “about.config” in the address bar and agree to the appearing warning.