Apple Approval Notice text message scam

this scam is still happening I got this text message on 01/23/2025 “Apple Approval Notice

We have noticed that your Apple iCloud id was recently used at "APPLE STORE - CA" for $143.95, paid by Apple Pay Pre Authorization. Also some suspicious sign in request and apple pay activation request detected. That looks like suspicious to us. In order to maintain the security and privacy of your account we have placed those request on hold.  If NOT you? talk to an Apple Representative. Failing may lead to auto debit and charge will not be reversed. Call +1 808642**** immediately to cancel this charge.

Billing Department :  Subscriptions and Billing - Official Apple Support

Have a great day!”

[Edited by Moderator]

I just received this today. This is a scam. I’m pretty sure.

Regular Message

Action Required: A 863.95 Apple ID transaction has been flagged. For further information and resolution, contact 8********01 at your earliest convenience.

[Edited by Moderator]

They are still sending this message in 2025. Exactly same amount of money but now they are saying APPLE STORE-CA which is closer to what my bank account actually calls the transactional organization. So they are getting better at it.

DC3715 wrote:

They are still sending this message in 2025.

Which means enough folks are still exposing their Apple Account credentials.

This is a business.

This scam has clearly been working well enough.

Why bother adding a randomly-generated number? (That’s not at all difficult, but, well, why even bother?)

When the payoff from this particular text drops, the text will get edited, or the text will get replaced with new text.

Devinalford44 wrote:

I agree, even though I am so tempted to call them and keep them on the phone for two hours and tie them up from scamming other people. I'm sure my number would get escalated on their call lists and I'd pay for the enjoyment of hassling these terrible people.

Someone has done one better: Theres an AI Chatbot pretending to be an elderly woman that keeps on messing up the instructions until they finally give up.

I received the same message. I checked my Apple Pay account and found a fraudulent charge with a different amount. It might just be a coincidence, but you should check your account anyway. But not through any information/phone number or link from the text.

qtboy wrote:

Wow, I just got it. I’m not taking any action other than deleting and reporting as junk. What I don’t get, is where and how did they get my iMessage name? Or did they?

Millions of people get spam, and scams.

Collecting and spamming phones and spamming texts and spamming messages is a business.

Spam from Messages tends to be a bit easier to deal with than does spam by SMS or RCS. Apple can better block that spam, when it gets reported. As for SMS and RCS spam, the carriers have been slow to address that mess. (There are apps that help with SMS spam, such as the Bouncer app.)

How does this work? Collect (or steal) a pile of email addresses, look for the iCloud addresses among those, and off you go with a list for the Apple-flavored scams. And if the spammer send a few million wrong scams to the wrong address, the spammer doesn't care.)

Want to know (some of the places) where your email address has been breached? Start here:

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

As for how to get a list for SMS and RCS spam, ~everybody knows every possible phone number. 😉

shawne144 wrote:

This is the text that I received twice this morning; by 2 different email servers, Gmail & Outlook

Yeah, that’s being spammed to millions of people.

As are some other scams, including the ”pervert” sextortion scam.

And yes, the spammers adjust the wording.

Lots more scams: https://reddit.com/r/scams

Pulling a previous reply forward…

Received text message:

“Apple Approval Notice

We have noticed that your Apple iCloud id

Word salad. It’s also called an “Apple Account”, formerly “Apple ID”.

The scammers haven’t caught up with the name change.

…was recently used at "APPLE STORE - CA" for $143.95, paid by Apple Pay Pre Authorization.

More word salad

Also some suspicious sign in request and apple pay activation request detected.

More word salad, typos and bad grammar and all.

That looks like suspicious to us.

Yeah, even more mis-grammatical word salad

In order to maintain the security and privacy of your account we have placed those request on hold. 

Wow, even more word salad.

If NOT you? talk to an Apple Representative.

Word salad.

When fraud is suspected, banks default to rejecting.

They’ll ask you to confirm your (blocked) purchase, not to block some suspected-fraudulent purchase.

Failing may lead to auto debit and charge will not be reversed.

Word salad, and also not how credit card billing and payment disputes work.

Call +1 805366**** immediately to cancel this charge.

Yeah, because Apple is likely to be posting a not-toll-free telephone number, and — if you searched for it — a telephone number that goes who-knows-where, but not to Apple.

Billing Department :  Subscriptions and Billing - Official Apple Support

Hahahhahah no.

Have a great day!”

Also nope.

If this text message were from Biff’s Big Y Market and Pancake Restaurant’s Department of Fraud Prevention, I’d expect grammar and phrasing errors. Biff’s never been good at the grammars. For messages from Apple, not so much.

Now… assuming that all the above details still might not convince some folks that this message is a scam, the next stop is to contact Apple Support directly, using a telephone number that is posted at the Apple website, and ask them. Anybody can answer a phone number, and lie about who they are, too.

PS: Calling telephone numbers and SMS sending numbers and sending email addresses can all be spoofed / faked / forged, too.

PPS: for even more, see the previous pages of replies posted here.

Got this text message so evidently they’re still scamming people.. Apple Approval Notice

We have noticed that your Apple iCloud id was recently used at "APPLE STORE - CA" for $143.95, paid by Apple Pay Pre Authorization. Also some suspicious sign in request and apple pay activation request detected. That looks like suspicious to us. In order to maintain the security and privacy of your account we have placed those request on hold. Your Photos, Data, Bank Information and Cards are at risk. If NOT you? talk to an Apple Representative. Failing may lead to auto debit and charge will not be reversed. Call +18889xxxxxx immediately to cancel this charge.

Billing Department  

Have a great day!

[Edited by Moderator]

Rem92601 wrote:

I just got this message at 9:08 this morning and it has an email as the contact. Do I need to report this to authorities or just block and move on?

Well, you are one of probably 100 million people who have gotten this scam message, so just delete it and move on. There’s no point in blocking it, because it will come from a different number or email next time.

Rem92601 wrote:

I just got this message at 9:08 this morning and it has an email as the contact. Do I need to report this to authorities or just block and move on?

The world is a little more complex, with millions of spam and scams messages being generated continuously by the many scammers’ many businesses, and with as many as 38 different times all “9:08 this morning”, and with no global email log, and where the spammers will have moved on to a different email address(es) already, or just as soon as the one they’re using is taken offline.

As mentioned, delete and move on.

Maybe also enable unknown-sender filtering, or add an SMS filter such as Bouncer.

In years passed, there were some efforts in the US to reduce SMS spam, and to target scammers’ financial linkages, but I don’t expect much further progress in that area for a while.

I also received one of those text messages telling me my AppleID was used to purchase something costing $143.+ and was given a 1-888 number to call to correct the charge. I suspected it was a scam and looked into and noticed that many people got the same message

Don’t interact with the scammers. Always check forums before replying to anything.

Apple will not text you like this.

If they point you to:

General:

Language & Region:

And at the very bottom of the page they point out:

$12,345.67 and 4,567.89, please look at the first three words that say:

Region Format Example

and then maybe look closely at the date, which is usually in the future.

Charges are not listed under language or font preferences.

SilentCare wrote:

Received this just now… searched and found your similar post. Hopefully Apple can use the links to better service and protect their services. Your financial institutions also strive to protect their customers from fraud.

First, Apple doesn't read here in this user-to-user forum for feedback or suggestions. Second, Apple is not a law enforcement agency. There is really nothing they can do about these messages. Third, the link is actually legitimate. What is not is the phone number.

This scam is still going on. Just got this same text from "go*******krf@gmail.com" The message is updated, but it's the same old scam:

Apple Approval Notice

We have noticed that your Apple id was recently used at "APPLE STORE - CA" for $143.95, paid by Apple Pay Pre Authorization. Also some suspicious sign in request and apple pay activation request detected. That looks like suspicious to us. In order to maintain the security and privacy of your account we have placed those request on hold. Your Photos, Data, Bank Information and Cards are at risk. If NOT you? talk to an Apple Representative. Failing may lead to auto debit and charge will not be reversed. Call +1 8***67-**** immediately to cancel this charge.

[Edited by Moderator]