I received this fake sms message last night. see image. "become a mystery shopper and earn $400 weekly.
I took a screenshot then hard rebooted. the message is not in my txt messages list. i'm a little worried that I'm infected?
thanks
iPhone 6, iOS 9.2.1
whoever they are they are most certainly not Apple in any way shape or form. this is a scam, no one is going to pay you to shop, they just want to trick you into giving them personal info and you get bupkis in return.
you can try to investigate them but it's likely the domain is a front to another domain embedded in another domain claiming to have a PO Box in Scottsdale AZ with a gmail address as the contact which is not used by anyone and it's all a guy in an apartment in Tbilisi.
Class 0 or flash SMS are usually blocked by most carriers (all in the USA). Some countries governmental emergency services do use them for alerts (the USA federal alert system does not - it used a somewhat different system).
There are also apps for Android and hacked iOS devices that allow individuals to send them, unfortunately, and if the carriers don't disallow them, they will go through.
Claudia_Princess wrote:
Do you know who is AppleShopper.us?
Yes, it is a scam as old (at least) as the internet - https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/2017/03/11/beware-mystery-shopper -scam/98903708/
Be it AmazonShopper.<whatever>, eBayShopper.<whatever>, MallShopper.<whatever>, etc, etc
Your phone is not infected. It is nothing more than an annoyance.
how is it being sent to me? it doesn't appear to me a txt message?
I'm not sure how you got it. I see that you live in Canada and I'm not familiar with that. [maybe the carrier sends ads?]
One thing is sure that its fraud and don't open something like that.
Check this out https://www.sunlife.com/PSLF/worldwide/Fraud+alerts?vgnLocale=en_CA and https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/mystery-shopper-scam-strikes-again and https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/beware-mystery-shopper-scams
dave_truck99 wrote:
how is it being sent to me? it doesn't appear to me a txt message?
It's something called a "Flash" message. It's a system that's primarily used by (some) carriers to send you messages about your service or account. On some carriers, it's possible for users to access this if they get the right codes and send messages like that. They can be quite disconcerting but they can't do anything malicious.
Do you know who is AppleShopper.us?
TKS!
Claudia_Princess wrote:
Do you know who is AppleShopper.us?
I don't, but I do know who they are not. Apple is who they are not.
mystery shopper scam - sms message
