This morning I received a very strange phone call on my iPhone. It was from somewhere in Texas (not that is for sure) and the caller was listed as TREASURE D. I never answer calls from numbers I don’t know, but what was strange was the phone rang and rang well beyond where voicemail would have come on. I finally had to press the sound button to end the call as I didn’t want to touch the screen showing the hangup or answer options. After a few minutes I realized the radio program I was listening to did not come back on but when I went to that screen I discovered I could not get the WiFi to stop spinning.
I shut the phone off, let it sit a few minutes, then restarted it. After it came back on it asked me if it was OK to have dougeddy@ME.com have access to FaceTime and Messages. I absolutely declined that. I also reported the number and the issue to MalwareBytes on my phone, which has really be excellent. I also blocked the number.
Anyone else having this kind of problem? Did I do the right thing and did I do enough? Both my wife and I regularly get idiot calls and many are highlighted by MalwareBytes as known scammer or other risky calls.
Everything you did sounds correct, and I’m assuming you blocked the number. Although I don’t have answers to the lengthy ringing, Glenn did write a very informative article about the new Stir/Shaken technology that mobile providers have had to recently implement that will help to reduce spam:
Thank you both. @MMTalker I appreciate your link. While the number of spam calls has decreased a bit we are still receiving too many. I really like MalwareBytes app on the phone, it seems to be pretty good and I always report spam stuff to them.
@alvarnell doesn’t FaceTime usually show up as that? I don’t use it very much but when I get one usually my camera comes on and the screen indicates it is a FaceTime call.
What interested me was the suggestion that I was trying to add the dougeddy@ME.com to my accounts - I have no idea what ME.com is and have never used it. That happened shortly after that call and I had to decline on all my Apple devices. It was a good opportunity for my wife to see how to handle such a situation as she is very uncomfortable about tech stuff.
I just discovered that after doing an internet search. Odd thing is I never had a ME.com account and can’t figure out why my devices would indicate I was trying to add it to my accounts. Just glad I didn’t approve it and even happier that it wasn’t my wife’s phone and she accidentally said OK to it.
It’s the domain for MobileMe. Apple continued to use it as the default e-mail domain for iCloud until 2012, when it was replaced by icloud.com addresses.
My iCloud account has two mailbox names. One @me.com and one @icloud.com. Mail sent to either one goes to the same place.
If you had an old .Mac account that you kept active, it was also migrated forward as a third alias to your iCloud mailbox.
If you visit the web interface to iCloud mail and view your account preferences (click the gear in the lower-left corner, then “Preferences…”, then the “Accounts” tab), you can see all the e-mail addresses that are configured for your account. You can also create up to three additional aliases if you so desire.
In my case, both of these were automatically added to FaceTime and Messages as a part of signing them in to my iCloud account. I’m not sure why yours wasn’t already there (assuming dougeddy@icloud.com is your canonical iCloud e-mail address - if it’s not, then this was clearly a hacking attempt of some kind).
I’ve not used my iPhone for FaceTime, so can’t confirm that there is any indication there that it’s FaceTime, but I have had a few FaceTime calls appear on my iPad, which I use extensively during the day, and as far as I’ve been able to determine, the notifications appear identical to cell phone calls that are forwarded to other devices on my network. The camera did not come on, but had I chosen to answer I would assume it would. In all cases they were either from a number I didn’t recognize or accidental and I never answered any of them.
FaceTime audio calls show up like a phone call, and if you answer them the camera doesn’t come on (they look like normal phone calls when answered as well). The ring tone is different though.
Thank you all for your help! All has been very quiet so I think it may have been a coincidence with the phone call though me.com is odd after all these years since I’ve had a little used icloud.com account for years. Being locked in again because of COVID is making me paranoid lol. NC is raging with it again.
Did you have a Dot Mac email address (at mac dot com)? If so, when MobileMe replaced Dot Mac, you were automatically assigned the me dot com domain address using your Dot Mac username. Ditto for when iCloud replaced MobileMe. Thus I now have THREE email addresses, one for each domain Apple used, and each with the same username. I’ve never used the me dot com or icloud dot com addresses however.
Thank you Dennis. I really don’t recall MobileMe or Dot Mac. I suspect I must have had a MobileMe account long ago but I’m old and I have a hard time remembering yesterday lol. I appreciate your input. So far things seem to be settled down so I suspect it was a coincidence (knock on wood!)
OK just read this post and you seem to of jinxed me. I too have received these voice calls - I assume they are FaceTime audio calls from spammers.
Must be a new thing or perhaps I’ve been doing it for a while I’m not noticed it.
OK just realized this might be from my Google voice line that is linked to my phone via the voice app - it says voice audio not FaceTime audio. So it’s people spamming my Google voice line I suspect as it rings once and immediately stops for every spam calls I receive probably once a day or less.