Protect Your iPhone: Apple Sounds the Alarm on Red Alerts
The Warning Signs
Apple’s Red Alert Warnings
IPHONE owners must heed a serious warning – or risk losing their passwords and credit card details to crooks. Apple is urging users to look out for two types of “red alert” that mean you’re potentially in danger. It appears inside Safari, the default web browser for iOS on iPhone. And it’ll show up as red text in the URL bar where a website name would normally appear. The warning is to flag that a website you’re visiting isn’t safe, as Apple details in an official security memo to users.
What to Watch Out For
According to Apple, there are three situations where you’d see this alert:
– The website is encrypted, but its certificate is expired or illegitimate
– The website’s certificate is valid but the version of TLS is not secure (TLS version 1.1 or earlier)
– The website is unencrypted and asking you to enter password or credit card information
You’ll see the smaller warning if an unencrypted website is asking for your info. And if you’ve clicked into the form to enter information, you’ll see the more alarming warning – which fills the entire address bar and has a red exclamation mark.
The Danger Zone
What Apple is trying to warn you of is that a website isn’t encrypted or secure. When a website is marked as being encrypted, it means that the data that your web browser sends to its server is jumbled. So if someone tries to snoop on the data in transit, they won’t be able to steal it.
Phone Scam Statistics
Americans are bombarded with three billion spam phone calls a month. In 2022, Americans lost some $39.5 billion to phone scams, with 68.4 million US citizens affected, according to TechReport. The majority of scams happen over the phone, with fraudsters twice as likely to call compared to text in 2021, as reports the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Many phone calls from reputable businesses may be marked wrongly as spam, but 38% of companies have no idea whether they’re being marked as “potential fraud” or not, according to Hiya. Never hand over any personal or financial information if you suspect a phone call is a scam. To cut down on spam phone calls and scams, sign up for the Do Not Call Registry. Telemarketers, by law, will need to check that list before they call you up.
Stay Safe Online
“When you see “https” in a URL, the site is using a protocol that encrypts information before it’s sent from your computer to the website’s server,” cybersecurity giant McAfee explains. There are plenty of ways that you can be scammed online, even if you think you’re visiting a safe website. So always be wary whenever you’re inputting credit card details or passwords online.