Stolen iPhone iCloud Scam

There was a passcode on the iPhone. This has nothing to do with ignorance of Apple users not setting passcodes. Has to do with stolen iPhones, and the thiefs taking advantage of Apple’s lack of control of their domain. They are using Apple’s @icloud.com domain to act as Apple representatives and complete their crime (stolen iPhone black market) via phishing.

The concern is that Apple is allowing fraudulent iCloud customers to set up @icloud.com emails preceding with “Apple.id” or similar. These fraudsters then use their “Apple.Id…..@iCloud.com” emails to phish the username and password of the stolen iPhone so that they can fully take it over. This exact scam was posted on another discussion thread on Apple’s website in 2015. The fraudster whose @icloud email was identified was never shut down by Apple - that iCloud email still exists today.

As a lifelong Apple user, I expected and was let down by 2 things from Apple at the very least:

• When an @icloud.com email is used to phish or commit fraud against other iPhone users, this @iCloud.com username should be frozen, flagged or shutdown immediately by Apple. And an investigation started to remediate the case.

• To maintain security and protect their loyal customers - Apple should take a proactive approach to identifying or blocking fraudsters to commit fraud through their own domain on their own customers. Ex. Don’t let someone make an iCloud account Apple.id@icloud.com or similar that could be used to falsely pose as an Apple representative. OR screen and block a message falsely undersigned as “Apple Support”. Apple did a good job screening my post above to remove the fraudsters iCloud usernames… use a similar logic!

Strange… The iCloud emails were removed by Apple on this post to protect the fraudsters.