No sooner had Apple announced its latest addition to the smartphone fam, the iPhone X, pre-orders sold out. It’s allegedly awesome, with face recognition security, a screen that the Justice League couldn’t destroy, and a whole bunch of other enhanced functionality you didn’t realise you couldn’t live without.
Along with such magnitude comes a price tag to match, and at around £1,000 per unit, you’re probably looking at a way to get your hands on this bad boy for free. Lucky for you, according to research by tech firm ZeroFOX, there are 532 social media pages dedicated to the new iPhone X, and while we haven’t trawled through them all, we’ve found loads of pages offering you the chance to win one.
So exactly how can you win an Apple iPhoneX from one of these sites? You can’t. Apple doesn’t give away free iPhones. It doesn’t need to. It has created a premium, high-end commodity for which people are prepared to camp overnight in the street to be first in line to buy.
Each, and every one of these social media pages are fake. They’re all totally dodgy. There is no prize, certainly no iPhoneX and the pages do not belong to Apple. In fact, these pages are set up by scammers monopolising the release to fool hopeful individuals into giving away valuable personal details which can be used for social engineering or even identity theft.
Keep your personal details safe. Do not like or follow these sites. Do not fill in a form asking for details to send you a free phone. And do not click on any links that may take you away from the site. In its research, ZeroFOX found that a staggering 74 of these pages offered malware links.
If you see a social media site claiming to be Apple, or claiming to give away an iPhone X. Do not like, do not follow and certainly do not exposure your friends and family to the risk of being scammed by sharing. Instead Run.
Sarah Burns is Prizeology’s Chief Prizeologist, an IPM Board Director, and a SCAMbassador for National Trading Standards Scams Team.
