We wrote a story on an iPad scam in 2011 and how they were mainly e-mail bourne. However we were soon to discover that the spammers have spread their efforts to other communication channels. As always, we encourage our users to comment on our blog and they have been flooding in. More than 500 people have now shared their experiences with ipad scams sharing spam mails, spam text messages and telling us their stories of strange phone calls and alerts during the night claiming that they’ve won an iPad.
Once again, these are scams and we greatly appreciate all the comments! They are very helpful for those googling the case and all the phone numbers used. Thank you very much to everybody involved and feel free to keep the comments going!
What do these iPad scams look like?
We have been asked by some of readers for example what the scams look like since most aren’t as used to seeing SMS scams as they are with traditional mail spam. Here is an example from Rachel who wrote us a short e-mail stating “iPad Scam in Canada too”. This particular scam is a SMS text message from the number: 1 229 339-4556.
All these “you won an ipad” scams all generally look the same but there are some slight variations. There is also a “help Apple test a new product” variety as well as giveaways that describe the prize as an “iPad 3” which while technically correct in the sense that the latest iPad is a 3rd generation product but inaccurate as the official name is “The New iPad”
The scammers continue to use various tricks they have learned from years of spamming with varied phone numbers, secret codes, and landing page links / URLs. We can only repeat what is written several times in the comments: A general rule of thumb, if you ever receive a text message about an Apple product, it is scam. Do not visit the site or call back!
Check out the full story on iPad scams and study and feel free to add to the comments.
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