- #Can you purchase applecare with an apple gift card install#
- #Can you purchase applecare with an apple gift card license#
The scammer showed me he’d put $300 into my account and said I’d need to purchase Google Play cards - ideally three in $100 denominations. I observed his cursor moving around inside my bank account (which I had logged into for him) and when I questioned why multiple payments of $1,000 each were going to a “Ronnald,” I was shown other screens to demonstrate the money was still in my account and that the actual “transaction” was $0.Īgain, he said, this was part of trapping the hackers. them” affair and I was in it for the long haul. The scammer had artfully turned this into an “us vs.
#Can you purchase applecare with an apple gift card license#
(Coinbase is actually a digital currency exchange for cryptocurriences like bitcoin.) I just had to scan in my driver’s license as well as my Social Security number, although that number was masked.
#Can you purchase applecare with an apple gift card install#
Our next destination was something called the “Coinbase” site, which I was told would register me in the government system and install a protective shield against future invasions. I remember being surprised that Apple was working so intimately with the government, but the site looked legit. We entered a site designed to look like it came from the U.S. Offshore tech support is the norm these days, so I didn’t think anything of it. Phone scammers have become skilled at making legitimate numbers appear in your phone ID.Īs the caller steered my computer, we started to talk. Chances are if I had checked, I’d actually have found the number (not realizing it was bogus). I just wanted to get this mess fixed and finished. 'How Do I Know YOU Are Who You Say You Are?'Īt one point, I asked, “Well how do I know YOU are who you say you are?” He invited me to double-check the number he was calling from against the AppleCare website. Next, I was to hand over control of my laptop so the caller could check it out. The first step was walking through my computer’s settings to turn off my history and cookies and turn on the firewall. He would stay with me and install provisions to prevent this from happening again, he said, comfortingly. As I started to berate myself aloud, the caller told me not to be so hard on myself. I believed I’d enabled the hack through my carelessness. I knew I had at least once, despite a warning the hotel network might be unsecured. I was asked if I’d used any unsafe networks while abroad. I told the “AppleCare” man about it, and said I’d been traveling in Africa. My mind flashed back to seeing a notification about my iCloud account that I’d chosen to ignore while on the road. “We’re seeing IP addresses from China and Russia accessing it.” Your account may have been compromised,” I remember hearing the caller say. It was an 800-number and I reflexively answered since the conference call also had an 800-prefix. I’d just wrapped up a conference call when the phone rang.
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I’d traveled for 24 hours and was catching up on work after sleeping nine hours straight. It was the day after returning from a two-week trip to Uganda. Although my out-of-pocket loss came to just $500, the opportunity cost was at least 10 times that because of the hours I had to devote to cleaning up the mess I’d made which I could’ve spent earning freelance money.