Apple Approval Notice text message scam

MrHoffman wrote:

Tech support scammers have all sorts of things they’ll point to as part of the pretext of the scam (not the least of which includes telemetry), and to help identify those worth investing the time necessary to scam.

Using the region formatting examples is a new one to me. Weird and kind of clever.

MrHoffman wrote:

There are some discussions of whether it makes sense to make these scams better too, as that can end up wasting the scammers’ time when a somewhat-wary caller calls in and then hangs up before the scammer can reach the profit they seek.

As John Oliver explained a few months ago, you are wasting the time of virtual slaves in huge scam factories in Myanmar; thousands of desperate people who were offered a job, were bused to a “village” in the middle of nowhere and found there was no way to leave, and the only way to spend their wages was at the “company store”.

I also received one of those text messages telling me my AppleID was used to purchase something costing $143.+ and was given a 1-888 number to call to correct the charge. I suspected it was a scam and looked into and noticed that many people got the same message

SilentCare wrote:

Received this just now… searched and found your similar post. Hopefully Apple can use the links to better service and protect their services. Your financial institutions also strive to protect their customers from fraud.

It’s 2025.

We get lied to.

We get scams.

We get propaganda.

We get social media algorithms pushing some opinions and muting others, too.

And Apple, thankfully, are not the police.

Got complaints about the current state of the world, check with your legislative representatives.

Not that some of the proposed legislative solutions won’t be far worse than the problems, of course.

Cat-shea wrote:

I got this same message today, 7am . Friday, February 14 2025…. How is this even still happening!?

Why stop doing something that is hugely profitable? The amount of money raised by this and other phishing messages is in the billions of dollars.

Jetaime77 wrote:

The funniest thing about the text I received was it came from a gmail address🤣🤣🤣. Seriously!

The "You haven unpaid tolls" messages that I get always seem to come from a Yahoo address. These are so common that my state's EZPass website has a big banner warning people about them. It's been there for a couple of years.

I received the same text message today and thought to myself that it was rather suspicious. not to mention that the incoming email address in which this text message was sent from is usually one of a scammers

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I got the same one today! It just made my gut instinctively know this was some kind of half baked scam. I’m so thankful for those in this community for the content that describes, exactly the reason for my concern.

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Get rid of Nord VPN. It has nothing to do with getting scam messages (billions of people daily get scam messages), but using VPN actually makes you more vulnerable to identity theft, because there is a “middleman” (in this case, Nord) that knows and logs everything you do. Thus, you are dependent on the honesty of the VPN provider, and also the risk that they may be hacked.

For the best identity protection enable iCloud+ Private Relay with Safari.

And you might want to review this→VPN: What you need to know - Apple Community

Devinalford44 wrote:

I keep these people on the line as possible. I kept one going an hour last week. I figure every minute they're talking to me is less time they have to scam someone else. My mom was plagued by these people when she was alive so I have no mercy for them.

Love it!

I got one today. It’s crazy because I recently lost my AirPods so for a second, I thought it was connected. I thought the number didn’t look like it was from Apple and I luckily didn’t click on it.

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Nppdchaplain wrote:

I called the number but the guys English was so bad I could not understand him. He started asking questions so I hung up.

Calling back means your number is worth more to call again, and worth more to sell.

LeviBlue wrote:

I just got this so they are still at it…

Scammers will be at it for the foreseeable future. For decades, and longer.

Scamming is a business.

Adjusting and changing their scams as their response rates and profits rise and fall, and inventing new scams, too.

1403 Apple alert,Your Apple id was recently used at 'APPLE STORE' for 1303.38  paid by Apple Pay, if it's not you call 1(******6, to cancel this charge. These scams are getting worse everyday. I hope this helps out a lot of people who fall for this 🥺

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glossolaliac wrote:

Received this message today, 4.9.25, so it's still circulating.

It and variations will continue circulating for the foreseeable future, decades, and variations will outlast all of us.