While Apple has been slow to fix the battery issues plaguing its new iPhone 4S and other devices running the new iOS 5 software, it seemed the jailbreaking community had come to the rescue. A tweak that hit Cydia earlier this week claims to fix your battery life woes under iOS 5, but it wants $4.99 for the privilege.
As it turns out, the tweak does nothing; it’s just a complete scam to steal your cash.
A certain proportion of shameless scammers have their eyes set on your iCloud account. They are sending phishing emails in which they claim to be Apple and request your login information. They say that if you do not provide it, your account will be terminated.
Remember Project Black Mirror, those hackers who claimed to have hooked up an some EEG suction cups, an Arduino and a MacBook Pro to an iPhone 4S and got Siri to read their minds? Lying bastards, the lot of them. And shame on us, we fell for it, at least in part.
Scammers have already taken to Facebook to exploit the death of Steve Jobs. PandaLabs has “detected a malicious link” on Facebook that was making the rounds earlier and claiming victims.
The page was called “R.I.P. Steve Jobs” and a link on the page claimed that 50 free iPads were being given away “in memory of Steve Jobs.” This was obviously a scam, but it seems that over 21,000 Facebook users have already been infected by the malware.
An article on Macworld today sheds some light on the Towson Hack — a mysterious scam involving stolen iTunes store credit dating back to November of last year.
Macworld highlights a trafficked thread on the Apple support forums that tells story after story of stolen iTunes gift card credit, initially relating to a changed billing address to Towson, Maryland.
McDonalds. One goes there for burgers, french fries, and occasionally a tasty McFlurry. One should not go there to buy an iPad, however. A young woman has learned that lesson the hard way.
A particularly nasty phishing scam is making the rounds, according to MacRumors. Why is it so nasty, you ask? Because the email is designed to trick you into upgrading your existing MobileMe account to iCloud.
A group of hackers have discovered a vulnerability with Apple’s Dev Center which leaves the site open to phishing scams. Unless Apple fixes it soon, users could find themselves unknowingly redirected to malicious websites that attempt to steal their credentials.
The Better Business Bureau is warning Facebook users to read the fine print when responding to ads.
A recent BBB press release stated that an estimated $1.3 billion will be spent on social networking advertising this year. The large print on ads featured on social networking sites, like Facebook and Myspace, do not always tell the entire story.
The warning about MacBook Air scams is a hoot:
Also common on Facebook are ads to get a free MacBook Air claiming that the company is seeking laptop testers. The ads lead to an incentive marketing program at https://www.colormyrewards.com/ where participants must sign up for various products and services in order to earn their free laptop.
The Fine Print: Customers must complete two options from each of the three tiers, Top, Prime and Premium before receiving their “free” MacBook. Example offers listed in the Top and Prime tiers include signing up for credit cards or trial offers for subscription services such as for vitamin supplements or DVD rental services. In some cases, the participant will need to pay for shipping, and if they aren’t vigilant about canceling the trial offers they signed up for, they’ll begin being billed every month.
Examples of the Premium offers listed on the Web site that must be met in order to get the MacBook are much more expensive and include paying as much as $1,500 for furniture or purchasing a travel package with a minimum value of $899.00 per person.
BBB Warns: Incentive programs can be extremely costly in the long run and the fine print shows that the customer might have to pay a significant amount of money in order to get their “Free” items. It is also a red flag that Apple does not even make MacBook Air in purple, red, pink, or green. (Emphasis mine.)
And as flickr user 4braham noted (image used with a CC license) the Mac in the scam pic isn’t a MacBook Air. Sheesh!