Don't Do This One Trick: Hackers Bypass iMessage Protection
If a link is sent by a new contact, the Messages app will "gray out" links to suspicious websites (such as those that are too new, use domain names too similar to those of major companies, etc.) In response, scammers have taken to trying this little trick to convince you to click the link anyway. Don't fall for it!
You can see the trick in our unpaid toll scam example, above. Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security identified the scammers responsible for that one as the Chenlun SMS phishing group, from mainland China, who have recently added the functionality to generate these scam texts to their phishing software. (P.S. For an example, see our test your security skills question)
The Bottom Line: If a link in an iMessage is gray (not blue) and unclickable, that's a big red flag. It will become blue if you reply to the message, so don't do that, and definitely don't click the link.
Dozens of Popular Apps Are Exploited to Spy On You, and Hackers Stole the Data
Hackers allege they have stolen a massive trove of data from Gravy Analytics, a service used by the Secret Service and others to track people's locations. 404media has the report on how the stolen data tells us which apps are being used to harvest user locations, possibly without the app's knowledge or consent. Apps include Candy Crush, MyFitnessPal, and Tinder, and many more.
The Bottom Line: Using privacy-preserving web browsers, a VPN, and disabling location sharing with third-party apps all contribute to reducing the amount of location data (and other data types) that a data broker like Gravy Analytics can collect about you.
Apple Intelligence Summarizes All Your News Notifications. What If It's Very Wrong?
Apple Intelligence is under fire from journalists worried that its frequent gaffs could have serious repercussions when it's used to (incorrectly) summarize news headlines.
The Bottom Line: You can disable AI Summaries of the notifications from news apps in Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications.
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School Systems Hack: Names, Addresses, Some Grades Stolen from School Software Giant
A maker of software for schools (used to track attendance, homework, etc.) reports it's had a cybersecurity incident affecting about 60 million students. You can see which districts are affected in the writeup from Bleeping Computer.
More Info on Which Telcos Have Spies in Them
Since the December hack of US and European telecommunications companies, more info has steadily trickled out. We now know most of the names of the companies compromised: AT&T, Charter, Consolidated Communications, Lumen, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Windstream, with two more as of yet unnamed. Use iMessages or Signal to encrypt your text messaging.
Related: How to use Apple's iMessages
New Version of macOS Malware Might Dodge Built-In Malware Scanning
Security researchers at Check Point found a version of the Banshee infostealer malware that contains a snippet of code somehow stolen from macOS's built-in malware scanner, XProtect, possibly to allow it to dodge detection. More evidence that it may be worthwhile to run third-party malware scanning on your Mac.
Apple Features Apps for Wildfire Relief Donations
You can just open the App Store or Apple Music to find a link to donate to the Red Cross for wildfire relief in California. More from Apple Insider.
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