You're welcome. 🙂
Scams are an unfortunate reality of being online. It doesn't matter how careful you are. Eventually, a crook will get hold or your email address/phone number. And once they have it, the crooks sell lists of possible targets to each other.
But, you aren't defenseless.
- Never, never, EVER, click the unsubscribe link in any email or text that isn't from a confirmed contact. Such as Amazon, Nike, etc. Trying to unsubscribe from a scam email or text only confirms a live contact and you will get more spam/scams. A lot more.
- Check the return address. For instance, a common scam is a supposed text from Apple that $xxx.xx has been charged to your account and to call a scam toll free number to dispute it. No matter how well written the text is (besides the fact Apple would quite literally NEVER send any such notice as a text), the sender's address never has anything to do with Apple. Not even if it's an @icloud.com account. Apple will only send out notices as an email with @apple.com or @email.apple.com as the sender. Anything else did not come from Apple.
- Beware of spoofing. Per the previous point, the sender's address may say xxx@apple.com, but that doesn't mean that's where it came from. Check further, such as entering the phone number in the email in a web search. They almost always go nowhere. That is, the number doesn't appear as assigned to anyone or even recognized because it's a brand new scammer's number. Some have been around long enough to appear in a web search, and will always be noted as a scam.
- With a scam message, you can tap on the email address or phone number at the top. Then click the i (information) button. Scroll down and choose to block the sender. When you then delete the message, you can also choose to delete and report fraud. You will never get another message from that source. Doesn't mean you won't get the same scam from a different address/number later. But you won't get anymore from that one.
- Screen your calls. Any call from a contact you saved will show that person's name (assuming you entered their name in your Contacts list). All others will just show a phone number. If it's important, they'll leave a voicemail. Or, it may be from someone you know at a hospital calling from an unknown number. Such persons will generally call again right away if you don't answer. That's a bit of a clue you should pick up. Otherwise, ignore it. We will usually look up an unknown number to see if it's something we should answer. Such as a doctor's number not in our contacts. But most of the time, a search just confirms it's a scam. Then it gets blocked and reported.
- It can also be your service. We had CenturyLink for our phones for some years. Every single spammer in the world seemed to know our phone numbers and the wife and I received, easily, 20-30 scam calls between us per day. Often (not making this up) from some woman speaking Chinese or other Asian language with happy, happy music going in the background. No idea why they thought we would even understand what they were saying. Just switching to Xfinity Mobile - with the same phone numbers - dropped the scam calls to less than 5 per week. It quickly became obvious Xfinity's service was automatically blocking know scam numbers, while CenturyLink was just letting everything through.
