Police in at least two Chinese cities have called for residents to turn off the FaceTime app on their iPhones to block scams.
In an article published on social media on Tuesday, police in Beijing said some scammers used FaceTime to steal money.
In May, a man in Hangzhou, in eastern Zhejiang province, received a dozen calls through FaceTime from a person impersonating a customer service representative from tech company Tencent, asking him to download software.
After complying, the victim soon realised he had lost 300,000 yuan (US$42,000) from his bank account, the police said.
The police also warned about a FaceTime option that enables screen sharing, allowing the person on the other end of the call to see everything on the victim’s screen, including messages, bank accounts and passwords. FaceTime also allows users to change their own names to official names, including the police departments or anti-scam centres, which could be used to dupe other people, according to the online post.
The police said scammers usually impersonated authorities on FaceTime, claiming that the victim’s accounts could be frozen, leading them to panic, and prompting them to click on fake links.
This leads to their device screens being shared, or to the victims opening strange websites, which in turn either allows the scammers to take control of their phones, or coerce the victims into transferring money to the criminal network, on the false assurance the money would be returned.
“No authorities will ever contact individuals through FaceTime,” the Beijing police said. “If anyone claiming to be from these departments or from loan centres and e-commerce platforms contacts you this way, you should definitely verify with the authorities.”
The police strongly recommended that iPhone users turn off the app if they did not use it.
Police in Hangzhou also cautioned residents that the feature could be used by scammers.
Police in the provinces of Jiangsu, Fujian and Shandong have also previously called on residents to block all incoming overseas calls if they did not have regular contact outside the mainland.
One police statement described in detail how customers of China’s three major telecoms operators – China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom – could block calls from abroad. The three carriers also launched a service to automatically block all incoming overseas calls in 2022.
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