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Tell If You Have Apple Care For You Mac10/17/2021
Click Continue.Over the weekend, I got an e-mail from an AppleCare support rep, who was responding to my recent reports of Mac malware being found in the wild. Enter the CAPTCHA code to confirm that you are human. Enter your device's serial number into the text field. Navigate to Apple's Warranty Status page. Once you have found the serial number for your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, or Mac, you can check the status of your AppleCare warranty from Apple's website.
![]() In two days last week I personally took 60 calls that referred to Mac Defender.EB: Do you have a support database that you share for cases like this?AC: What do you mean? As in articles for new issues we're running into?EB: Yes, there must have been a point where you noticed that a lot of people were dealing with this Mac Defender thing and that it wasn't just your calls.AC: We have a team of people who go though all case notes and find new issues that are popping up a lot and send notices to all of AppleCare. However, this last week over 50% of our calls have been about it. Now we're lucky to have any time between calls.We started getting a trickle of calls a couple weeks ago. I had a teacher call about Mac Defender last week.EB: So you are supposed to tell them that the Terms of Service don't allow you to help them remove it, and they should. So, panicking, yes, I'd say that would be the situation usually. Last call i got before the weekend was a mother screaming at her kids to get out of the room because she didn't want them seeing the images. That’s what antivirus is for.EB: I would imagine most of the people who are calling are fairly panic-stricken.AC: Well, I'm sure you're aware of what Mac Defender pops up on your screen if you don't buy it. The reason for the rule, they say, is that even though Mac Defender is easy to remove, we can't set the expectation to customers that we will be able to remove all malware in the future. What is dr cleaner on a macI'm going to assume criminals now have ahold of the info.EB: Do you see any signs that it is easing at all, staying the same, accelerating?AC: It started with one call a day two weeks ago, now it’s every other call. One person ended up trying five different cards. It kept "denying their card" and asking them to put another in. However, the rep that works next to me has had a few people who have. Our on-floor managers and QA guys do their best to let it slide, but if they start getting pushed from higher-ups, we could face write-ups and even termination.EB: Have any of the customers that you helped paid money to the Mac Defender pushers?AC: My calls? No. However, just because we're told we're not to help people get rid of it, most of us do.EB: Taking a little risk there? i assume your calls are randomly monitored and you could get a warning if someone decides to be a hardass.AC: Indeed we are monitored, but I can't personally justify telling a father who’s freaking out about what his 6-year-old daughter just saw that I can’t help him out. If our customers aren't happy, our pay goes down.EB: When the bad guys find something that works, they tend to push on it and morph it into other variations.AC: It’s going by a few names—Mac Defender, Apple Security, and a few less used name variants. Removing Mac Defender is easy, but if it ends up like malware for Windows, we're going to have a lot of unhappy customers, which is bad for the advisors. I've worked with computers for a while. Tell If You Have Apple Care For You Download But ForBut for most of us that know computers that’s a giveaway there.EB: What sort of advice do you leave customers with after you've helped them with this issue?AC: That even though they're using a Mac, they need antivirus/antimalware. It tries to trick you into giving it by saying its required to remove the infections.AC: Indeed, looks rather real, if you ignore the fact it pops up in your browser. As long as you don't give it your administrative password you're usually OK.EB: So customers who get hit by this are installing it and giving their admin password?EB: if they stop before that, nothing bad happens?AC: Yes, the file will download but for it to install it requres the password. McAfee, and Sophos.EB: It’s also important to be suspicious online.AC: Indeed, a lot of it does seem to stem from hearing from the sales person that there’s built in antivirus, and they believe that’s what they're seeing when it comes up.AC: Thanks, I'm sure it won't be long before we have a lot more of this, a lot harder to get rid of, too.
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