How to spot a scam text on your iPhone

What a typical scam text looks like

Neither message comes from the company it names. Both push you to act fast, both link to a site that isn't the company's real domain, and both will ask for card details or a login once you arrive.

Five signs a text is a scam

1. A deadline. "Within 12 hours", "today only", "account will be closed". Real companies rarely threaten by text.
2. A link to an unfamiliar domain. Look at the part before the first single slash. usps.com is real; usps-redelivery-help.com is not.
3. A small payment. A $1.99 "redelivery fee" or "toll balance" exists to collect your full card number.
4. A request to verify. Banks and Apple don't ask you to confirm passwords, codes or card numbers through a link in a text.
5. A sender you don't know, often an email address or a long number instead of the company's usual short code.

Settings that filter most of them

Texts from numbers that aren't in your contacts move to a separate Unknown Senders list, and links in them aren't clickable until you reply or add the sender. You still receive them; they just stop competing with messages from people you know.

Reporting sends the sender and message to Apple and, in many countries, to your carrier. In the US you can also forward the text to 7726 (SPAM) to report it to your carrier.

If you already tapped the link

Opening the page alone rarely harms an iPhone. The risk is what you typed into it. Work through whichever of these apply:

• You entered card details: call the number on the back of your card, report fraud, and ask for a replacement card.
• You entered a password: change it right away on the real site, and on any other site where you used the same password. Turn on two-factor authentication.
• You entered your Apple Account details: go to Settings › [your name] › Sign-In & Security and change your password, then review the device list and remove anything you don't recognize.
• You installed a profile or "configuration": go to Settings › General › VPN & Device Management and remove any profile you didn't add on purpose.
• You entered nothing: close the tab and delete the text. No further action is needed.