Oliver Haslam on December 6, 2020, 1:05 am

The FTC Warns Users Of A New Automated Call Scam Claiming To Be Apple

The FTC has warned people that they could fall pray to a scam as a result of being duped into thinking they are dealing with Apple when, in fact, they are not.

According to an FTC blog post, people are receiving calls that claim to be from Amazon or Apple, with the latter claiming there’s an issue with the user’s iCloud account and that they can press 1 to speak to someone about it.

But you absolutely shouldn’t do that because, clearly, it isn’t Apple calling.

In another twist on the scam, you get a recorded message that says there’s been suspicious activity in your Apple iCloud account. In fact, they say your account may have been breached.

In both scenarios, the scammers say you can conveniently press 1 to speak with someone (how nice of them!). Or they give you a phone number to call. Don’t do either. It’s a scam. They’re trying to steal your personal information, like your account password or your credit card number.

The best thing to do here is to ignore the call completely, but if you’re concerned you can call Apple – or any other company – by using the numbers they publish on their websites. Don’t call any other numbers the scammers gave you for obvious reasons. It might be a good idea to block the caller’s number as well.

Audio samples of the two recorded messages have been embedded above, so familiarize yourself with these audio clips, and stay safe everyone!