With the holidays fast approaching, and people shopping for Black Friday & Cyber Monday, this is a perfect time for scammers to call pretending to be “Apple Support”, trying to get you to release information that you shouldn’t be releasing.
I received at least 4 of these calls today on my personal line. Here’s the exact recording I received: “Before using any Apple device, please contact Apple Support Advisor. Press 1 for Apple Support Advisor. Press 2 to listen to this message again. Or if you wish to contact us later, please call us on our toll-free number (208) 262-0000. Thank you.”
The first couple calls I received looked like they could be legit, as Caller Id showed “Apple Retail”. I’m used to these phishing scams, and brushed it off. I chuckled on the next few I got that read “Private Name” and had the same message.
As a general rule, if you see “Private Name”, or “Private Number”, just don’t answer it (and block the number if you can).
Even if I thought this was possibly legit, seeing these calls come from different phone numbers – (303) 256-2580 and (856) 792-9480 – would have been enough of a tip off that it’s a scam.
If you get any phone calls like this that you are not expecting, it’s always a good idea to take down the phone number, hang up, and then CALL THE COMPANY DIRECTLY to make sure the phone call is legitimate. Most of the time, it’s a scam. Forbes wrote an article about this one a while ago, but I wanted to share it because it seems out in full force for the holidays. If you’d like to see the Forbes article, click here.
So, when you get calls like this, please remember Admiral Ackbar… “It’s a trap!”.
