Sorry, you didn’t win an iPhone 13: If you’ve been tagged on Instagram for it, it’s a scam

If you have recently been tagged on Instagram with the message of “Congratulations, you have won an iPhone 13”, we must warn you that, as you probably already thought, it is a scam.

In recent weeks, an increase in the number of mentions and alleged contests has been detected where the claim of the Apple mobile is used to try to get users to participate in a website, with the ultimate goal of redirecting them to a fraudulent page and deceiving them.

An apparent serious contest that leads to a scam

The first step of this scam is to get the user’s attention by tagging them on Instagram, with the message of having been the winner of an iPhone 13. Clicking on the link takes us to a website where a survey is carried out before proceeding, supposedly, to receive the prize.

This is a phishing campaign, just like alert from the Internet Security Office (OSI). A scam in which they try to trick the user by pretending to be a serious process to finally, under the excuse of making a small payment, they end up obtaining our data.

The scam is carried out through several channels, from a website or an email. In general, these campaigns they have a relatively careful language and there are no excessive misspellings.

In the case of the example that exposes OSI, we are shown an image of an iPhone 13 along with a disclaimer at the end to unsubscribe from the mail. The survey asks a series of simple questions with the claim of ‘Answer and win a new iPhone 13’ and under the assumption of having been ‘chosen to participate in their free loyalty program’.

At the end of the process, you are asked to choose one box among several. In the first place, it fails, but a new opportunity is offered and the message of having been a winner appears. In this case, a request is made for payment of 5.99 euros to access the loyalty service through which we receive as a giftsupposedly the iPhone 13.

And this is where the catch is.

This is where the recommendation said a thousand times on the internet that we should not give our personal data and that We must be very careful where we insert our data, mainly the bank data.

The payment gateway mimics card payments, but it is not https protected or encrypted. The amount is written in plain text and the green ‘pay now’ button is to receive the income. The catch is that being a fake payment page, the amount to be charged can be much higher.

Each particular case can lead to different economic problems. The general recommendation is that if you have been the victim of a scam of this style, contact your bank immediately. And again, we remember that you have to be very careful. Otherwise, we can end up paying more than a brand new iPhone 13 costs.

In Xataka | How to avoid being scammed by fake accounts when you enter an Instagram contest