Have you recently received an urgent phone call or voicemail from a number showing as “Apple,” which claims your “financial activity” on your devices was at stake? Hopefully you didn’t answer.
Don’t panic, your Apple accounts and their associated financial data are safe, and the company is not calling users to warn them about “suspicious activity” on their iCloud accounts or on their devices.
As detailed by Lifehacker’s Josh Ocampo, The calls are a common spoofing scam by scammers that are looking to impersonate legitimate companies (and their legitimate phone number), in an attempt to extract useful information from unsuspecting consumers.
Ocampo says he recently received a call from “Apple,” and when he picked up, he was met with an automated welcome message from a supposed Apple customer support line. When he was finally put in touch with an “agent,” he was asked for personal information, including his iCloud account details.
The number appears to be legitimate, and if you requested a legitimate call back from Apple’s real customer support website for aid with anything, that’s the number you’ll see, and any subsequent fake calls will appear to be coming from Apple’s legitimate support line.
So, how can you avoid this particular Apple-related scam? Never answer or return any unsolicited calls from the company. As Apple tells users on its website, the company will not call you unsolicited. Allow any unrequested calls appearing to come from Apple to go to voicemail, and never give out any personal information. Also, never call back any numbers left on your voicemail by robocalls, as they could rack up stiff toll charges on your phone bill.
The scammers are out there, and seem to come up with new scams like this every day. Stay alert, my friends.