Is it actually possible to win a 'free iPhone' or a 'free iPad', as promised by the adverts you'll have seen online? Er, not really - although there are occasionally exceptions, as we will explain.
This article is your guide to avoiding 'free iPhone' scams, including a couple of particular scams we've spotted and which you will want to avoid.
For related advice, see How to spot the iOS 'Crash Report' scam.
'News' stories about amazing offers
Back in March 2020, a few (slightly less tech-savvy) friends of our started noticing - and initially taking at face value - an online article, seemingly from a shopping subsection of the reputable news source CNN, reporting on a startling offer: an iPhone 6 for just £1.
This is a pretty good example of the 'free iPhone' class of scam (even though in this instance, presumably to make the offer more plausible, there is a nominal fee), and will make a good starting point for this article.
Clues that something is wrong
The URL was http://bit.ly/2NVjs0y - a different domain to the news site, and your first clue that something is up.
Furthermore, it's peculiar that this simple URL goes to an individual news story and not to a home page. Standard website structure would have a welcome page hosted at [domain].com, and this would then link to individual articles with longer URLs such as http://bit.ly/2NVjs0y
(On some browsers, the domain-name part of the URL is the only bit that's shown, which can help to hide this.)
Other parts of the page gave clues that the scammers were a little out of date. The 'advert' on the right refers to iOS 8 rather than the then-current 9, and the offer itself is for the iPhone 10 rather than the 10s or 10s Plus.
This article is your guide to avoiding 'free iPhone' scams, including a couple of particular scams we've spotted and which you will want to avoid.
For related advice, see How to spot the iOS 'Crash Report' scam.
'News' stories about amazing offers
Back in March 2020, a few (slightly less tech-savvy) friends of our started noticing - and initially taking at face value - an online article, seemingly from a shopping subsection of the reputable news source CNN, reporting on a startling offer: an iPhone 6 for just £1.
This is a pretty good example of the 'free iPhone' class of scam (even though in this instance, presumably to make the offer more plausible, there is a nominal fee), and will make a good starting point for this article.
Clues that something is wrong
The URL was http://bit.ly/2NVjs0y - a different domain to the news site, and your first clue that something is up.
Furthermore, it's peculiar that this simple URL goes to an individual news story and not to a home page. Standard website structure would have a welcome page hosted at [domain].com, and this would then link to individual articles with longer URLs such as http://bit.ly/2NVjs0y
(On some browsers, the domain-name part of the URL is the only bit that's shown, which can help to hide this.)
Other parts of the page gave clues that the scammers were a little out of date. The 'advert' on the right refers to iOS 8 rather than the then-current 9, and the offer itself is for the iPhone 10 rather than the 10s or 10s Plus.
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