It has been a week since the first reports came in from China’s biggest payment platforms suggesting that hackers had used Apple IDs to swipe funds. The Cupertino tech giant has now issued an apology in what appears to be an acceptance of the allegations. In a statement, Apple said that the company found “a small number of our users’ accounts” that had been accessed through phishing scams, reports The WSJ (paywall).
“We are deeply apologetic about the inconvenience caused to our customers by these phishing scams.” – Apple
It isn’t immediately clear how many Apple users were hit or the amount of money stolen.
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Both Alipay (of the e-commerce giant, Alibaba) and WeChat (owned by Tencent Holdings) had claimed last week that some of their customers had lost money thanks to their Apple IDs being compromised. The login details were compromised in a phishing scam, which were then used to gain access to the targeted accounts to make purchases.
Apple, in its statement, says that the affected customers didn’t have two-factor authentication enabled and has recommended users to enable 2FA to avoid such incidents.
How to enable two-factor authentication on your Apple ID
If you haven’t yet enabled two-factor authentication for your Apple ID, you can do so through a couple of easy steps. It will save you from a number of attacks, specifically the phishing scams.
- Go to Settings [your name] Password Security.
- Tap Turn On Two-Factor Authentication.
- Tap on Continue.
