Scam Pop-ups, Scam Viruses, Scam Receipts, Scam Purchase

Scam email, spam messages, scam phone calls, spam pop-ups, spam calendars, gift-card scams, we are awash in scams.

Scammers all seek to use any lever against us—our fears, curiosity, what might titillation, our greed or vanity, even our tiredness—and to convince us to do something against our own better interests. To give the scammers our money, or information, or to load their malware or adware onto our computer, or to expose our Apple ID credentials or other passwords to the scammers.

Scammers will tell us anything they can think up, and they'll deliberately create their messages to disconcert us or to otherwise get us to react immediately; anything to cause us to not stop and think before reacting.

If you suspect that a message might be a scam, well, it probably is a scam. Ignore it and move on.

Telephone Scams

For many of us, telephone scams are most of the telephone calls we get. They'll tell us we're late on a bill, or that the tax collectors are auditing us, we won a prize, a friend or relative is in jail and needs bail money, that we have an outstanding arrest warrant, pretty much anything.

The displayed calling telephone number can be spoofed / faked / forged in many telephone systems, too. The displayed calling number is often not who called us. The caller can change calling addresses faster than we can block the faked calling numbers, too.

Or the caller and what they tell us and the calling number itself are all set up so that we're encouraged to respond to a third-party that had nothing to do with the call. To draw mass outrage onto somebody.

What to do? About the only option is to mute all calls from all unrecognized telephone numbers. And scammers can and will sometimes use recognized numbers to bypass this.

Not sure who is calling? Ask them who they are, what number they're calling from, and look up the telephone number, and call them back. If they're claiming to be a financial provider or credit card company, we already have their contact info. Use it.

Email Scams

Scammers will send us....

• purchase notices (fake)...
• messages (fake) claiming your Apple ID has been locked...
• notices (fake) that your payment information has been declined...
• one of your old passwords (real password, fake claim)...
• claims that they're watching us, and have access to our iPhone or iPad or Mac (fake claims)...
• prizes, gift cards, lotteries, inheritances (all fake)...
• reports that our computer is infected with viruses (fake claims)...

These can specify that the purchaser is in some far-off location, or purchased some product or service we might never want or might be embarrassed to have known to purchase, or anything else that the scammer can think of to disconcert us; to get us to react immediately, and to not stop and think.

I'll get the occasional mail message with an old password of mine, which the miscreants have acquired from server breaches. They’ll make a few absurd claims, too. (Trust me, you don't want to see me in any video.) The miscreants can’t do what they claim, though we will want to avoid re-using passwords because these scams aren’t the only thing that the miscreants will try to do with our old and exposed passwords.

Macs and iPads and iPhones now warn you about password re-use and password exposures. These scams and the other ways that miscreants can use our exposed passwords are why Apple notifies us about our passwords, too.

Here’s a write-up on one variation of a common email scams, the so-called "sextortion" scam:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/07/sextortion-scam-uses-recipients-hacked-passwords/

I'll get the occasional mail message with an old password of mine akin to the message you received, which the miscreants have acquired from server breaches. They’ll make a few absurd claims, too. They can’t do what they claim, though you will want to avoid re-using passwords because these scams aren’t the only thing the miscreants will try with an old password.

Website Adverts and Pop-up Scams, "You're Infected With Viruses!" Scams

There are many variations of these. Scams can claim You have 15 viruses! among many other bogus claims, and there are many other variations.

Websites and pop-ups cannot scan your device, or your Mac, or your Windows system.

Again: websites cannot scan your device, your Mac, your Windows system, or any other system.

Not without you having granted that access. Usually by loading whatever app they want you to load, or by giving them your credentials.

Looooong thread about fake-virus-scan pop-ups, which is a very common scam...

I got a popup that says “Your system is infected with (3) Viruses … - Apple Community

Spam Calendar Subscriptions—“Hacked!” and “Virus!” calendar alerts

The scammer or spammer has offered a request for alerts from a website somewhere, and the subscription was accepted. To remove that Subscribed calendar, find and remove the calendar.

On a Mac, open the Calendar app, tap the Calendars button if the left sidebar is not already open, look for the calendar that you want to delete, control-click on the calendar, and select Delete from the pop-up menu.

On iPad, click the Looks-like-a-Page-of-a-Calendar button in the upper right corner.

On iPhone, click Calendars at the bottom of the main Calendars app display.

On iPad and iPhone, look for a block of calendars labeled Subscribed calendars. The Subscribed block will be located just above the Other block, if there are Subscribed calendars present. For many of us, there will be no Subscribed calendars configured, and no block will be shown.

If you find the block and find any Subscribed calendars listed, then for each Subscribed calendar listed, click the info ℹ️ button to the right of the Subscribed calendar entry, confirm the calendar is not one you recognize and that the color of the calendar matches the color of the spam or scam or “Virus!” calendar entries received (if any), and delete the calendar.

Apple has posted a video showing how to remove a subscribed calendar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgKO3Ed9-Bs

Generally, What To Do?

If you are looking at a suspect message...

• Look at what's claimed in the message, and think... does the message make sense?
• Legitimate callers will not ask us for sensitive data, for our passwords, for passcodes, for any two-factor authentication codes we might have received. Or if they do ask that, hang up or otherwise contact or call them back through published telephone numbers or websites or email addresses.
• Look at the spelling and format of the message. Apple doesn't "mispell" words or mis-format messages, for instance. (Scammers often do misspell words. These misspellings can be deliberate, too.) And messages from or claiming to be from Apple are either messages that you're expecting—such as receipts for purchases that you know you have just made, or the Apple messages will include your name and other identifying information. Here is how to Identify legitimate emails from the App Store or iTunes Store - Apple Support
• Is the link in the message appropriate for Apple or another legitimate sender? Apple is not going to embed links to ReallyApple.NotSketchyDomain.Example.Com, or some other not-Apple domain, for instance. On Mac, hover the pointer over the link to see what is referenced. On iPhone or iPad, press and hold on the link to see the link destination. (Shut off the link preview while you're there.)
• Don't open email attachments and don't open web links embedded in suspected messages.
• When in doubt, check with the sender through other means; create a new mail message or look up the telephone number and call to the sender, or check the sender's website; check Apple.com for your purchase history and subscriptions, for instance.
• Turn off remote image loading in your mail client. Scammers and spammers use these remote images to track whether you've read the message. If you want to see the links in arriving mail messages, select the image, or press the load-remote-images button.
• Do not use the unsubscribe link in anything that seems to be spam, and don't send feedback or complaints or angry mail to the spammer. Doing that verifies that you received and read the message and might well be scammed, and which usually just gets you yet more spam and yet more scams.

For many if not all of the scams and scam messages and scam pop-ups that you will encounter, delete them or ignore them, and move on.

Apple Documentation

Here is what the folks at Apple have to say about this mess:

Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support