How do I know if a call is really from a government agency?

Legitimate government agencies never call demanding immediate payment, threatening arrest, or asking for gift cards, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency. Hang up and call the agency directly using their official number from usa.gov.

What is a pig butchering scam?

Pig butchering is a long-con investment fraud where scammers build fake friendships or romances over weeks before introducing a fake crypto investment platform. Losses average $120,000 per victim. Any unsolicited investment tip is a red flag.

What should I do if I have already been scammed?

Report to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, the FBI at IC3.gov, and your state attorney general. If a bank transfer was involved, call your bank immediately — you may have a window to reverse it. Document everything: screenshots, phone numbers, transaction records.

After Thieves Steal Your iPhone, a Fake AI Calls You to Grab the Passcode Too

The Theft Doesn't End When You Lose Your Phone

Your iPhone is gone. Maybe someone grabbed it at a bar, snatched it on the street, or took it while you weren't looking. You're already dealing with the loss. Then a call comes in, or an email, or a WhatsApp message, from someone claiming to be Apple Support, ready to help you recover your device.

That call is the second attack.

What Is This Scam, and How Does It Work?

A phishing-as-a-service platform called AnonyMousKIT rents out AI voice agents that call stolen iPhone owners while impersonating a support agent named "Alice from Apple Support." The calls happen in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The voice sounds natural. The script sounds official.

The goal is simple: get you to read out your device passcode and your two-factor authentication code. With both, thieves can disable Activation Lock, the feature that ties your iPhone to your Apple ID and makes it useless to anyone else. Once that lock is gone, the phone becomes a clean, sellable device.

The operation doesn't stop at one call. AnonyMousKIT can hit the same victim across five channels in sequence: email, SMS, WhatsApp, a recorded voice call, and finally a live AI voice agent. Each wave looks like genuine follow-up outreach from Apple. By the time the AI calls, you may have already seen "Apple" contact you multiple times and let your guard down.

Why Is This Happening at Scale?

Each AI call costs attackers less than $0.10. That's the whole economics of the problem. Hiring human scammers is expensive. Training them is expensive. AI voice agents are nearly free to run, work across multiple languages, and don't make nervous mistakes.

As of late August 2026, 168 resellers are selling access to the AnonyMousKIT platform. The operation runs across 506 domains, with 188 still active. That's not a small crew running a clever trick. That's a commercial marketplace built on top of your worst day.

How Do You Tell a Real Apple Call from a Fake One?

You don't have to, because Apple never initiates unsolicited calls to customers. Full stop.

If you receive an unexpected call, text, email, or WhatsApp message claiming to be Apple Support, especially one asking for your passcode or a two-factor code, it is a scam. Hang up. Do not read any code aloud. Do not click any link. Do not confirm your name, your Apple ID, or any account detail.

A passcode is not something any legitimate company needs from you over the phone. If someone asks for it, they are trying to steal from you.

What to Do Right Now

If your iPhone was just stolen:

Go to icloud.com from any other device and sign in immediately.
Use Find My to mark the device as lost. This locks it remotely and puts a message on the screen.
Change your Apple ID password right away.
Contact your carrier to suspend the SIM.
File a police report. You'll need it for insurance and for any fraud claims that follow.

To protect yourself before anything happens:

Enable two-factor authentication on your Apple ID today, not eventually.
Set a strong, non-obvious iPhone passcode. Avoid birth years, addresses, and anything someone watching you could guess.
Turn on Screen Time with a separate passcode and use it to restrict changes to your Apple ID from the device itself. This is one of the most underused protections against this exact attack.
Consider switching to a passkey for your Apple ID login. Passkeys can't be phished the way passwords can.
Remove your personal details from data-broker sites. Scammers often cross-reference stolen devices with public records to make their follow-up calls sound more convincing. Data-removal services like DeleteMe handle this, or you can opt out of the major brokers manually for free.

The Pattern That Never Changes

Phone theft has always had a follow-up. Early on it was SIM cloning. Then it was social engineering your carrier. Now it's a rented AI agent calling you while you're still in shock, using your distress as the attack surface.

The technology changes. The underlying move doesn't. Urgency plus authority plus a plausible story equals compliance. Every version of this scam runs on that formula, and it keeps working because people believe a company calling to help them would need their passcode to do it.

No company needs your passcode. No company needs your 2FA code. Anyone asking for either is not trying to help you.

Do this now:

Turn on Find My and two-factor authentication on your Apple ID
Set a strong iPhone passcode that someone watching couldn't guess
Enable Screen Time with a separate passcode to block Apple ID changes on-device
Bookmark icloud.com so you can reach it from another device if your phone disappears
If you get an unexpected call from "Apple Support," hang up without engaging