Scam with Apple Gift Cards

A series of scams occur by asking people to get payments over the phone for hospital bills, taxes, bail money, debt collection, and utility bills. Online fraud, which is lately causing a lot of issues, including one report mentioning that 1,000 frauds were arrested in 20 different countries, is dedicated to using many methods, including gift cards.

This kind of scam is called confidence fraud. It is achieved by having scam artists pretend they are somebody people know and care about and play on their desire to help their friend. Once the scammers get the iTunes gift cards pictures, they cash in by selling the codes for a fraction of the retail price.

According to Apple’s website, the latest scam of this kind involves the Apple gift card scam., with the iPhone parent stating, “if you think you’re the target of a scam involving Apple Gift Cards,

The statement added that “the fraudsters are demanding codes from App Store & iTunes Gift Cards, Apple Gift Cards, or Apple Store Gift Cards; we want to make sure our customers know these scams.”

After the cards have been bought, the victim is requested to pay by conveying the code(s) on the back of the card during a phone call with a person.

It is worth mentioning that the App Store, iTunes and Apple Gift Cards are used to acquire goods and services from the Big Tech giant, including Apple Retail Stores, their official website, App Store, iTunes Store, and Apple Books, for subscriptions to its services like Apple Music, Apple News+, and Apple Arcade, or iCloud storage.

Those cards can be delivered only to the Apple Online Store and at Apple Retail Stores. At the same time, the customer can be approached to use the cards for any other payment; they could most probably be the target of a scam and should immediately convey it to the police department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) .

To avoid becoming a victim of scams, people should never offer the numbers on a Gift Card to someone they do not know. Although Apple is known for its high-security protocols and has made it easy to delete accounts in case of frauds, the dangerous part is that when the numbers are provided to the scammers, the funds on the card will be spent before customers can contact Apple or law enforcement.

Customers should not use their App Store & iTunes Gift Card, Apple Gift Card, or Apple Store Gift Card if they are not purchasing an item from any of Apple’s online stores, Apple Books, or for an Apple Music subscription or iCloud storage.