| Beware malware on Apple devices 20:09 - Jan 16 with 731 views | Ryorry |
Had googled to look for a book, both print and ebook or audio, decided against downloading one & had navigated away, when a completely authentic-looking pop up arrived telling me to ring Apple, on an 0800 number (which theirs always is) as my Mac had been infected by malware & was compromising my security on my banking site, facebook etc. The only way I was able to close the window or do anything further on the Mac was to click "don't allow further messages" (or something similar) on the popup. Decided that the pop-up itself might also be a scam, so didn't ring that number, which also had a 'ticket' number on it; looked thoroughly officially Apple. Meanwhile a 'Britcoin' advert page also came up.
Rang the Apple number given on their own page - it is indeed a scam, they've had several reports. Basically, Apple themselves will never tell people that this/that/the other is compromised on their devices - they can't do so as they'll never know, because of their strict privacy policy.
Must say that the assistance/support given was really fantastic - 3/4 hr, free of charge, whilst Ina (or Ena) did the shared screen thing to go through stuff with me (they can't take contol, customer does all the clicking necessary). |  |
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| Beware malware on Apple devices on 20:26 - Jan 16 with 629 views | Ryorry |
| Beware malware on Apple devices on 20:16 - Jan 16 by DanTheMan |
- Internet ads will never be able to tell you about your PC and whether it is infected with anything. The popups are designed to make people who aren't computer savvy to click them. However they can get your operating system and browser, which is why yours said Apple support. On a Windows machine it would just say Microsoft instead.
- Companies will never ask you to call them to get rid of malware.
- Web pages can be deceiving, always be sure to check the address url. Does it look correct? Any obvious mispellings? e.g. for Apple:
I know I'm basically reiterating what you're saying, but it's incredible how common this is.
Although for some people they can be incredibly good fun to mess with: https://soundcloud.com/g3ksan/troll [Post edited 16 Jan 2017 20:17]
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Thanks Dan. The silly thing was that with that particular popup, there was nothing to click, it was all about the phone number. I asked Ena if the 0800 bit was fake & that people would actually be paying if they rang it - she thought so, but more importantly you'd think you were talking to an Apple advisor, therefore more likely to reveal info you shouldn't. Some people have even given them control of their screen - scary - as I said, Apple can't ever actually do that, only the user can point the mouse or use the trackpad. Scamsters, however, may have 'ghost' mice.
Usually I'd get a warning sign 'are you sure this page is safe' or similar, but because I was searching mutliple sites/pages via google, things were just moving too fast for that to come into effect. | |
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