Greg's Corner

iPhone scam is symptom of bigger problem

By Greg Collier

Recently, an iPhone user was locked out of her new iPhone. On her husband’s phone, she did a Google search for ‘Apple Customer Service’ and called the number she found. The person on the other end of the call said they’d be happy to help her out. Except, the woman hadn’t really called Apple. Instead, she had called a phony customer support number run by scammers. These scammers had accessed her iPhone and were able to use her Zelle app to steal $1500. However, this scam is not exclusive to either Apple or Google.

This scam is a version of the tech support scam. Instead of trying to trick victims into believing there’s a virus on their device, this scam waits for someone with a tech problem to call the scammers. In these cases, the scammers take out ads on popular search engines. Not just Google, but Bing and Duck Duck Go as well. The scammers will submit a flurry of ads to these companies in hopes just a handful get through the vetting process. If the ads get approved, they can be listed at the top of the search engine rankings. While the search engine companies claim to be on top of the problem, scammers continue to have their ads for phony customer services approved.

There are ways to protect yourself from this scam. The first is when you’re doing a web search, make sure the listing you’re about to click on doesn’t have a tiny ad indicator near it. These are usually little text boxes that say ‘Ad’, but sometimes have a color that’s similar to the page’s background. Another way to protect yourself is by going to the manufacturer’s website directly. For example, instead of doing a web search for Apple Customer Service, just go directly to apple.com in your device’s web browser. From there you should be able to find the customer support number if the company has one.