Stolen iPhone Messaging Scams

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me tell you about two different scams you should know about if you've had your iPhone stolen. 

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Now if you've had your iPhone stolen you may think that's the end of it. It's gone! But since there are security features on the iPhone the thief can't really get anything for your iPhone. It's locked to you. So they can't really resell it for anybody else to use. That is unless they can trick you, using social engineering, to release your iPhone and let them do with it what they want. So there are two main scams that they use to trick you. Of course there are lots of variations on each of these. 

The first one is to try to convince you to release your iPhone from Find My iPhone and let them take it over so they can erase it and prepare it for resale. Then they can make a lot more money off of it instead of just reselling it for parts. The second is by tricking you into giving them your Apple ID password so they can get into your Apple account and they can release the iPhone and then perhaps even do more damage since now they are in your Apple account. 

So here's how the first scam works. You loose your iPhone and several days or even weeks later you get a text message from somebody saying that they have your stolen iPhone. They can claim either to be the thief, someone who bought it from the thief, or someone that bought it thinking it was a used iPhone and now they find they can't use it. They'll often say that they can actually see all of your data. They can read your emails. They can see your contacts, get into your bank accounts, and all of that and that they don't want to do that. So they want to help you erase the iPhone so that your data isn't available to them or the person that they resell the phone to. This is, of course, a lie. They don't have any access to your information. They don't know your passcode. There's no way for them to decrypt the information and to get into that. Sometimes they'll even try to convince you by trying to find public information about you. For instance, they can take your name or phone number and look up your friends on social media and make it seem like they have your contacts. They'll do things like that to try to convince you that they are in your iPhone when in fact they are not. They'll even tell you that they tried to erase the iPhone but your data keeps coming back and what you need to do is to release the iPhone. To remove it from your account so that they can completely erase it and protect your information. So nice of them to be thinking of you.

But in fact the scam here is they don't have any access to your information and they don't care about that. They just want you to go in and release the iPhone so they can take control of it. For instance, if I go to iCloud.com here and I click on the apps I'll see that one of the apps is Find My. I go into that and I can select my iPhone. Then here is where I can mark it as lost. Hopefully you've already done that. Also you can erase this device and remove this device. This is what they want you to do. They want you to click this Remove This Device button. This will take that iPhone off of your Apple ID and allow them to reset it and resell it at a decent price. So if you ever get a message from anybody telling you they have your iPhone, do not fall for it and use Remove This Device. It's perfectly okay and you should have already marked it as Lost when you first lost it. After a couple of days when you're sure you were not going to find it anywhere, and especially now if you're being scammed, you should definitely use Erase This Device which will completely erase the phone but leave it locked to your account. But NEVER use Remove This Device. This is handing the iPhone to the scammer and now they can profit from it and it will encourage them to keep doing this to other people. 

Here's what some of these scams actually look like. I found these two examples at the discussions.apple.com site. So here you can see one where it says they bought your lost iPhone. That they have access to the information which they do not. That the iPhone is going to go to people who may want to steal this information. But they want to help you out. You can see here at the bottom they are asking you to use that Remove button to remove it and then they can reset it. But in truth they can't get access to your information now and just using the Erase button will actually get rid of all that information, although they can't even access the information before you did that erase. 

Here's another example saying basically the same thing. You could see a lot of these follow a script although they vary a lot. They'll claim that you tried to erase the phone but it didn't work. They still see your information. That's not true. If you erased it, it's erased. Here you can see they're asking to use that Remove button again. Even giving you a step-by-step on how to do it. Sometimes the scripts that the scammers use escalate really quickly. They will tell you , for instance, that they bought the iPhone with their last dollar and it's for their daughter who is sick with cancer and just wished to have an iPhone and is now crying because they can't use it and please release it, and all of that. It's all fake. Other times they'll escalate into threats. There are even reports of people getting pictures of weapons and threats agains them and their family. In truth this is just the scammers sending the same messages with the same script to hundreds or thousands of people and is probably on the other side of the planet. 

By the way if you want to check to see whether or not you've got Find My iPhone turned On all you need to do is go into your Settings App. Go to your Apple ID. Look for Find My iPhone and then there you will see whether or not you have it On. If it is now On you definitely want to turn it On to protect yourself in case it is stolen but also to help you find your iPhone in case you simply misplace it. 

There's another scam that doesn't seem to be quite as common. That's to simply get a message that appears to be either from Apple or from some other authority claiming that they found your iPhone. Now the scam is to trick you into entering your Apple ID and your password so that they can get it. This is done using a fairly simple phishing attack. For instance, you might get a message like this, that your iPhone has been found and simply click this link. If you look at the URL there you'll see it really has nothing to do with Apple. Here's another example claiming to be from Apple Support and just wanting you to click this link so that you'll go to a site, which you can see is not really Apple at all. But then the idea is you get to that site and it may look like a login for your Apple ID. So you enter your Apple ID email address. You enter your password and now they have your password. At this point they may even try to login to the real Apple website with your password which then sends you the two-factor code and they'll hit you with a message asking for that code. They hope you don't realize that this request isn't coming from Apple Support and you just hand over that code. Now they have your Apple ID. They can now go in and remove that device from your Apple ID account. Now they have your iPhone and can get money for it. Plus they now have access to your Apple account. So they can do all sorts of scams on you since they have access to everything else in your Apple eco system. 

So it is important if you get messages claiming that your iPhone has been found to just ignore them. Ignore all these messages. Never engage a scammer. They'll message you over and over again with either one of these scams. You just need to keep ignoring them. That's the way to make sure they go away fast even though they may continue to do this for days or weeks. Engaging with them in any way, even telling them that you know it's a scam, is just going to encourage them to get more threatening and keep going hoping that they can scare you. 

Unfortunately there is not much that can be done to completely stop these kinds of scams. You can certainly block the number so you don't get the message but they can simply use another number to continue the scam. So you have to kind of fortify yourself. Block each number as it comes in and keep ignoring them until eventually they stop. Without you removing the iPhone from your account all they can do with the iPhone is to disassemble it, take some of the parts like the screen or the cameras, and resell those as parts for a repair shop. They will make very little money doing it that way. Of course, once they do that they will stop bothering you because they no longer need the phone removed from your account. 

I know people are going to ask whether or not you should contact the police about this. Of course you certainly can. Some of these messages could get very threatening so you would have good reason to ask the police for advice. But in reality there's probably not much your local police can do since the scammer is almost certainly in another country. I hope you found this useful. Staying aware of these scams is the best way to stay safe. Thanks for watching.