iCloud Scam Phone Calls
 

This afternoon, I received over a dozen phone calls from recorded woman telling me that my iCloud account had been compromised and to press 1 to be connected to Apple Support. If I refused the calls, voicemails were left (that's how I know that they were all the same). All the phone numbers were spoofed to show my area code and exchange.

I do not and have never had an iCloud account. (And intend never to do so.)

The only piece of Apple hardware in this house is my friend's daughters old iPhone.

It was most annoying.

If you do have an iCloud account, be wary.

Yup. Three of those today on two different numbers...neither of which Apple knows about...spoofed numbers here too.

Thanks for the heads-up, tho... Generally, any number that has the same area code and prefix and the number being called (if you don’t know it) is going to be spam. My telco calls them “neighborhood numbers”

The assumption is that someone who does have an "icloud" account may fall for it. They will be connected to the scammer who will usually try to get some bank details and then clean them out.

This kind of thing is why I no longer bother with a land line telephone. Its impossible to block these calls without paying for an extra service. My experience is that mobiles receive a lot less of these kinds of calls anyway and there are better means of blocking them.

A few years ago we had a clown who said he was from the bank, which just so happened to be our bank, and I let him ramble on for 5 minutes, pretending to be hard of hearing, then informed him that I wasnt with rhat bank... then he changed his mind and said he was with the financial conduct authority...

Amazingly some fall for it...

I fielded one this morning from "Amazon Prime". Needless to say, I don't have an account with them.

I don't get it. I never get such calls.
Do you all have WhatsApp accounts? They must get your numbers from somewhere.

I have my iPhone set to deny all calls except for entries in my contacts. I have iCloud and WhatsApp and if I get calls, they just go to voicemail or the "dead call" bucket. I do listen to some voicemail scam calls just for comedic purposes.

I occasionally answer "Hello, this is Lenny" If you don't know Lenny, check it out on Youtube.

I should answer some of these - would be fine to mess with them. Or I could answer with "Leeeeroy Jenkins!!" which will make no sense unless you are a world of warcraft player :)

These calls were to my cell phone.

They were labeled "Scam likely." I should have mentioned that.

No I'm not on WhatsApp or any social network. But I am in the telephone directory (I'm old-fashioned that way) so I suppose they could get my number out of there. I regard these calls as merely a nuisance because in this country, incoming calls on land lines don't cost the subscriber anything.

Same in every country I spent long enough in to notice such things.

Yes, that is what I did a couple years back. Made a whitelist. Probably not the ideal solution, I may miss a real call and not know it. I've told people, if you want to call me, you'll have to give me your number so I can put it in the whitelist.

It's my understanding that if you answer, they know that you are there, and will pester you more.

Are any of you getting spam texts? That started here this year. I drop them too. It's real nice. The spammers have just about made the telephone unusable. And, cell phones have to pay for all calls, in and out. Or at least it counts against your data/minutes.

I got a call on my land-line today to tell me that my telephone and internet might be compromised. The give-away was the strong US accent of the recorded message, but above all the fact that it was supposed to come from BT — whom I don't use.

I had a similar call last month asking if I'd ordered a £600 camera and, if I hadn't, did I want to cancel the transaction. Apart from the fact that a credit-card purchase only gets questioned if you go over the limit, there was the same US accent and mis-identification — she said the call was from Visa, rather than the actual name of an issuing bank. I pressed 1 just to see what would happen and got an Indian (of course!) who repeated the question and offered to connect me to a supervisor to cancel the payment. Presumably, that's when they start asking you for confidential information.

I don’t get many spam texts, surprisingly. I get tons of calls from a dude named “scam likely” :) though. Kidding...if someone need to get a hold of me, they need to leave a voicemail. I get voicemail notifications so I’ll know.

How could you stop when you were so close to finding out!
;)