Watch Out For This Apple Computer Scam!

Watch out for the Vanilla gift card scam. If you purchase or receive one, don't open it or try to activate it. I ran into this when a friend just sent me one for Christmas. It was a $50.00 gift card, and each time I attempted to activate it, I got the message that an error occurred and to try later. After several attempts, with the same results, I became suspicious and investigated. Well, there are reams of complaints and those whose cards were activated, ran into difficulties in attempting to check their balance. In short, they lost their money, as did the purchaser. Over 400 cases against this outfit and only 5 have been settled.

I went ahead and reported them to the BBB, Visa, Equifax, et al. I let them know, and my friend happily got her money back. Not always the case I am told. I think they have to be threatened before they return your money. They also deal with 2 banks I never even heard of.
 
I watched the video... goodness me, you really have to be very much on the ball with this one. Most people wouldn't be smart enough to capture this one.. I know I wouldn't have.... even the guy who reported it and was taken in by it is a product Manager in Silicon Valley ...so this is scary!

Thanks for the heads up Michael. !
 
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I only watched part of the video, but yesterday I received a very similar pop up "you are under attack" notification from "Windows". I had to manually force a reboot several times, and this thing is screaming at me with a loud voice designed to scare the daylights out of victims. I finally started to press my F keys one by one until it shut down for good. I don't even have Windows. I have Linux, which made me suspicious that it was not from Microsoft, which doesn't send these types of alerts according to their site on the internet.
 
I had four emails about my apple account today. I do not have one, so marked them as scam mail.
 
I don't have Apple products other than old iPods, but both sons and their spouses do, so I sent this to them. Thanks for letting us know about this one, @Michael Z.

It's valuable to learn about all manner of scams, even those that we may not directly be vulnerable to, because the more we know, the more cautious we will be.
 
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