Shanghai police warn of FaceTime scams

The public should be on high alert for telecom fraudsters upon receiving FaceTime calls from strangers, Shanghai police said in a notice on Saturday.

The Shanghai center against telecom fraud, affiliated with Shanghai's public security bureau, said there have been recent cases of suspects using Apple's FaceTime function to commit fraud, which led to victims losing their money or assets. They reminded people to beware and advised those who don't need the function to turn it off.

The fraudsters pose as custom service operators of e-commerce, banks or social media companies. They initiate FaceTime calls and guide victims to make money transfers using excuses and personal information they have obtained illegally, or encourage victims to download screen-sharing software and gain their passwords or verification codes to cheat them out of their money, the center said.

In one case the police revealed, a victim surnamed Zhang reported to Shanghai police she received a FaceTime call from a "custom service operator" who asked Zhang to confirm she had signed a loan contract.

Without such a contract and concerned about personal credit records, Zhang downloaded online-meeting program Zoom at their request and tried to cancel her account by sharing the phone screen and inputting her bank password.

Zhang received a text message saying 1.6 million yuan ($221,000) was deducted from her account, the full amount. The fraudster then told a panicked Zhang to send her money into a "safe account" which can "cancel the loan contract and get her money back".

While inputting a "verification code", Zhang received a text saying she was about to set the "transfer amount". Realizing she might have been scammed, Zhang called the police, who halted the transaction and stopped the money from being transferred out.

Police told local news portal Shanghai Observer fraudsters still use the old scam of posing as customer service, adding the key was not to share the screen and not leak personal banking information.

Tech experts told Shanghai Observer that FaceTime can be seen as a video-chatting tool. But unlike WeChat videos, FaceTime allows chats initiated by strangers, which are more prone to harassing or junk messages.

They added more tech-savvy scammers may record the chat and use face-changing software to cheat victims' relatives and friends.

But experts also assured residents there is no reason to panic. They said simply using FaceTime calls to conduct Apple ID theft was almost impossible, and those who became victims unknowingly revealed their account and password to the scammers.