Never sign in to someone else's Apple ID!

It is a known scam these days. Here on the Apple Support Community (ASC) we'll seeing an increase in posts from people that are scammed by logging in to someone else's account. How does that happen? What can you do to prevent this scam from hitting you? All of that will be covered in this user tip

The scam

People are coming to you with a believable story, but in fact it is an excuse to make you enter their Apple ID credentials on your device. They're telling you for example that they have dropped their iPhone in water, and that they really need to go and recover some files from their iCloud. Then they ask you to logout of your Apple ID, and to login to theirs. They will say that it is only for recovering some files, that they will logout of their Apple ID on your device when they're done.

In fact, there aren't any files to rescue. The scammers will put your device in lost mode, and as the device is paired to their Apple ID and not to yours, you're locked out of your device.

Most of the times the scammer will ask for money for the unlocking of your device. Without their Apple ID credentials there is no way to get in to your iPhone again.

What to do if this scam hit you?

First and foremost, report the scam to local law enforcement. It is an offense to scam people, and the police should know about that this has happened to you. After that, if you're having original proof of purchase information, you can try to start an activation lock support request at Apple, but please beware that because of the iPhone is in lost mode, it could be that it cannot be unlocked.

Recap

To prevent this trouble from happening remember one thing. Never, ever sign in to someone else's Apple ID on your device! No matter how good the excuse sounds, never do it! This is the only thing you can do to avoid these kind of scams. Don't fall for it!