Fraud traps taking advantage of the iPhone 18 Pro Max fever

(Dan Tri) - The heat of the iPhone 18 Pro Max not only attracts the attention of the Apple-loving user community, but also becomes an opportunity for scammers to take advantage of.

Experts at Kaspersky have discovered many fake websites promoting bogus incentives to deceive users and steal information or money related to the purchase of new devices.

A fake website offers iPhone 18 Pro Max for sale in Vietnam (Screenshot).

These scam websites appear in many different languages, including Vietnamese, English, Arabic, Portuguese and many others.

One of the fake websites discovered by Kaspersky invites users to buy new iPhone models with full specifications, with discounts of up to 25%. Besides the usual transaction methods, the website also encourages customers to pay with Bitcoin.

With a well-designed interface and a sense of trust, the site can catch users off guard, providing personal information and making payments. However, instead of receiving the product as advertised, buyers risk receiving financial losses from this scam.

Another fake website advertises an iPhone 18 Pro pre-order promotion with many color and storage capacity options, including colors that are not on the list announced by Apple at the product launch.

To increase appeal, the website also offers flexible payment methods, allowing customers not to pay the full amount immediately when placing an order but can pay the rest later.

Besides, the "seller" also commits to 100% refund if the customer cancels the order. However, these are just offers to create trust and can cause users to fall into scam traps.

In the next step, the user is asked to fill in a series of personal information on the fake website, from full name, phone number, email address, city of residence to contact information via WhatsApp application.

Thieves can take advantage of the iPhone 18 Pro Max fever to commit fraudulent acts to appropriate property (Photo: Doan Thuy).

This can become a source of data for cybercriminals to continue to carry out fraudulent tricks, such as identity impersonation or psychological manipulation of victims. After providing personal information, the buyer continues to be asked to enter bank card information to complete the transaction.

The entire above process is designed to collect as much information from the victim as possible. This data can continue to be stolen or used for subsequent attacks, while the victim's bank account is also at risk of being drained of funds.

"For many years, we have noted scams that appear around the launches of widely popular technology devices. User excitement can become an advantage for cybercriminals to take advantage of, while increasing opportunities to profit from fraudulent activities.

Users should be especially careful when choosing where to make purchases and only make transactions through official, trustworthy retailers. Unbelievably attractive offers, as well as products with more options or different from the information announced by the manufacturer, are all warning signs that users need to pay attention to," said Ms. Olga Altukhova, senior web content analyst at Kaspersky.