What can be done to stop phishing and spam emails?

Email addresses and phone numbers are sold on the web. Apple has nothing to do with it. And, most scams originate in foreign countries, so there are many legal hurdles if you wanted to go after them. It would be far too expensive so the feds only concentrate on the "big" players.

It would be far more effective not to share or publish your email or click on a best offer on a sketchy site that sells advertising space to whomever is willing to pay. Also, only download games that cost money; that way the developer does not have to get money from allowing advertisers.

If scammers do not make money, they would slowly disappear.

I maintain a "junk" email address to give out, never give out my phone number, do not share anything and do not "park" sensitive info online. The internet is a free for all.

As Mr. Lang said, it is a game of Whack-A-Mole.

You can try periodically changing your e-mail address – or having several e-mail addresses, one of which you give only to family members, friends, and other trusted people.

If you subscribe to one of the iCloud+ storage plans, you can use "Hide my e-mail" to generate one-off addresses. You can give one address to, say, Store A; and another to, say, Store B. Neither store gets to see your main e-mail address - Apple acts as a go-between to hide your main e-mail address from them. If you start to get lots of spam and scam messages from the e-mail address you used with Store A, you simply cut that e-mail address off and any further messages that the spammers and scammers send to that address go to /dev/null.

It helps, but the main defense is knowing how to recognize scam e-mails, and dispose of them on receipt.

It's a perpetual game of Whack-A-Mole.

For starters, those emails or messages come either from spoofed names/numbers, or do belong directly to the scammer. But for the latter, they only use them for a week or so, then move on to new ones.

In other words, blocking them is nearly pointless.

Second, most of these are from outside the U.S. where Apple can't really do anything about, and U.S. law enforcement have no jurisdiction. And on top of that, even when they are located and reported, law enforcement of the country they're in usually do nothing.

Anyone have any advice? We are concerned and as members of the Apple community disappointed in the lack of help.

The criminals are several steps ahead for every counter measure you take. You should be disappointed in how many criminals there are who have no conscience attempting to make money by scaring people, not in the lack of help.

• File a report with IC3: https://www.ic3.gov/

My daughter lost her phone a year ago and yesterday received an email threatening her safety. I spoke with many customer support reps at Apple. Most didn't know what to do. One kept us on the phone for 45 minutes while she read articles online. So DISAPPOINTING considering the situation. They had me send the life threatening text to abuse@apple.com

Anyone have any advice? We are concerned and as members of the Apple community disappointed in the lack of help.

cyn35 wrote:

My daughter lost her phone a year ago and yesterday received an email threatening her safety.

I assume from criminals who discovered that the phone is Activation Locked, and who want to "make her phone their own" (and perhaps also scam her in other ways).

I spoke with many customer support reps at Apple. Most didn't know what to do. One kept us on the phone for 45 minutes while she read articles online. So DISAPPOINTING considering the situation. They had me send the life threatening text to abuse@apple.com

Here are a couple of FBI "THREAT and INTIMIDATION RESPONSE GUIDE" slides that I found on the FCC's Web site. What your daughter received sounds like an "ELECTRONIC MESSAGE THREAT."

https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/threat_guide_english_final.pdf