Apple MobileMe Service Open to E-mail Harvesting and Spam

Apple’s MobileMe, a subscription based collection of online services and software offered by Apple, has hit a new low. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has recently warned that MobileMe is vulnerable to e-mail harvesting and spam. The service has been plagued by problems since it launched.

By default, every MobileMe subscriber gets a public iDisk file-sharing folder with a URL containing his/her username. Now, spammers can easily spider these usernames and convert them to valid e-mail addresses simply by adding @me.com and @mac.com extensions.

Unfortunately, users can’t delete their public folders and they can’t pick different usernames. Hopefully, that will change in the future as the privacy of MobileMe subscribers is compromised. In an attempt to calm user complaints, Apple recently granted eligible MobileMe subscribers another 60-days free extension on top of the 30-day free extension given in mid-July. On July 25th, Apple CEO Steve Jobs went one step further and promised regular MobileMe updates “every other day or so.” However, his promise fell short and the status updates were discontinued shortly.