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phone hacked

I keep getting phone calls with a message that my apple account has been hacked. When I call back the number they identify themselves as apple. Not sure what to do.

iPhone 11 Pro Max, iOS 13

Posted on Jan 9, 2020 4:16 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 9, 2020 4:18 PM

Never, never, never call back to those numbers.


Apple does not make such calls.

All such calls are scams from criminals attempting to steal your personal and financial information. The callers will often use number spoofing to pretend they are calling from a legitimate business. The correct course of action is to hang up on them, repeatedly if needed. 


Avoid phishing emails, fake 'virus' alerts, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 9, 2020 4:18 PM in response to kidnursemj

Never, never, never call back to those numbers.


Apple does not make such calls.

All such calls are scams from criminals attempting to steal your personal and financial information. The callers will often use number spoofing to pretend they are calling from a legitimate business. The correct course of action is to hang up on them, repeatedly if needed. 


Avoid phishing emails, fake 'virus' alerts, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support

Jan 9, 2020 4:36 PM in response to kidnursemj

Responding to spam mail, requesting spam removal, pushing telephone buttons to “opt out“ in the spam phone calls, returning spam phone calls, all that does is pre-qualify you for vastly more spam, and vastly more scams.


Some folks I deal with were raised to always be polite, and have real problems with hanging up the phone on the spammers, and that politeness training doesn’t always end well for the folks. Makes those folks great fodder for the scammers, unfortunately.


Put slightly differently, your actions here are painting an ever-larger target on yourself.


If you have an iPhone on iOS 13, consider enabling the “silence unknown callers” setting. Settings > Phone > Silence Unknown Callers. Anybody not in your contacts list will get sent to voicemail.


Jan 10, 2020 6:17 AM in response to MrHoffman

I was reading a bit on that recently. These calls are all auto-dialed. You usually get a real person on the other end (the scammer), but the dialing is done by computer.


The problem there is the software doing the dialing also keeps track of how long you stay on the line. Doesn't matter is you're screaming at the spammer, calling them every dirt word you can think of or whatnot. It's all about time. If you stay on for more than a couple of minutes, your name and number automatically gets added to a "suckers" list. The amount of scam calls you get will then explode as your name gets added to more lists and sold to other crooks. More than that, because it's assumed you fall for the pitch (or you wouldn't have stayed on the line that long), your number gets priority in the call list.

Jan 10, 2020 7:40 AM in response to Kurt Lang

Kurt Lang wrote:

...The problem there is the software doing the dialing also keeps track of how long you stay on the line. Doesn't matter is you're screaming at the spammer, calling them every dirt word you can think of or whatnot. It's all about time...


Same with responding to spam. Responding by opt-out or by replying verifies that the email address is valid, active, and monitored, and responding also confirms the user is insufficiently skeptical; that the respondent is well worth the investment to try to scam, and that the respondent’s email is worth re-selling to other scammers. The often-deliberate typos in the mail messages help filter out the skeptical folks from the more valuable folks; the folks thst won’t be, and the folks that might or can be scammed. The spamming is all automated, too. You’re interacting with a computer; with scamming apps. Those apps are commonly using the computers and resources of other and previously-scammed folks, too.


Jan 10, 2020 7:45 AM in response to MrHoffman

Yes, that too. Never, ever click the unsubscribe button on spam. That just scatters your verified email address to every spammer in the world.


That, and never allowing your email client to automatically load images. The retrieval of a 1x1 pixel image tells the email server what address retrieved the image, and bam! You're on the spam list.

phone hacked

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