NEW PHISHING PLOY

[infoplease]

Received this imessage this morning. My brother's birthday is today and the date is in my calendar.

Title of iMessage: Happy Birthday Brother. No message.
The note states that this address is not in my Contacts and has a link which reads 'Report Junk'. I will attach a screen shot I took before I deleted it.

They are getting very clever with their lures aren't they. What bothers me also is that they know it is my brother's birthday, do they have access to my calendar? Am I being paranoid - probably!

Oh Oh perhaps this is Apple protecting me .. Is Apple asking me to report this junk? But it can't be Apple with that telephone number. Can anyone enlighten me? Thanks G

I am more than a bit paranoid about clicking on links.

 

[chas_m]

It's unlikely anyone other than you has access to your calendar (and why they'd send that message to you is another question), but clearly someone has access to either your phone number or email address. Without seeing the portion that showed the "Report Junk" link I can't say for sure that part comes from iOS, but it probably does: unknown senders not in your contact list will get flagged like that, and you probably should have used the link.

You can do a reverse lookup on the phone number to determine who sent the message to you. It's possibly someone you know, and they may be infected with a Windows virus. If not, it might be prudent to change your iCloud password to something stronger, just in case.

"Spam Messages" are most often seen by people who have given out their phone number on websites that have subsequently been hacked. If you've ever sent your brother a birthday e-card through one of those sites, for example, that's a quick and easy way of harvesting all the data needed for this spam message you got. If the sender is not someone you know, you can block the number from ever contacting you again -- but in this case you can't since you've deleted the number.

 

[infoplease]

The tel number is there on the attachment at the top Chas. 1 613 328 3591 - it is a KingstonOnt. # I tried to get the reverse name info but they wanted $9.99 for the info.

I just tried Canada411ca but their reply said they don't have this phone number in their database.

Can you suggest another way?

Should I call the number above?

I have never used a greeting card app. I have two factor authentication now Chas and I think it would be impossible to make the icloud password any stronger.

 

[chas_m]

If you don't know anyone in that area, I'd assume it was a "wrong number and just block the number.