Scam of the day – September 18, 2026 – iPhone 18 Pro Scams

by | Sep 17, 2026 | Scam of the day

There is a lot of excitement about the  release of the new iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.  Apple opened pre-orders for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max on September 12, 2026. As always, however, whenever the public is enthusiastic about something, so are the scam artists who are ready to exploit the public’s interest.  Scammers have registered hundreds of phony Apple websites and other websites offering sales of the phones at significantly lower prices than Apple’s official starting price of $1,199.  Some of these phony websites are also offering sales of the new folding iPhone Duo which will not even be available for pre-orders until October 16th.  Anyone buying a phone from one of these phony websites will truly be getting a wrong number and lose the money they pay for a non-existent phone.  Many of the bogus websites offering the phone require payment through wired funds, payment apps or cryptocurrencies rather than by credit cards which is a strong indication of a scam.

TIPS

The best way to avoid this scam is to buy your phone either directly from apple.com or from an authorized reseller of Apple products.

Carefully look at the URL of any website you are considering using to purchase your phone.  If you are making a payment, you would want the URL to be preceded by https rather than merely http.  The “s” means that your communication is being encrypted and while even some phony websites may go the extra step and use encryption, most do not and so this is an easy way to spot a scam.  Also, never use your debit card for online shopping because the protection you get for fraudulent purchases is much less than when you use your credit card.
Sometimes carefully checking the domain name for a counterfeit website will provide an indication that it is a scam.  If the domain name has nothing to do with the real name of the company, you can be confident that is a scam.  I would caution you however that merely because the name looks legitimate does not mean that it is.  Often scammers will create phony, but very legitimate appearing domain names.
The Google Safe Browsing Transparency Report is a terrific free service where you can type in the URL and learn if Google’s research indicates the website is a fake.  Here is a link to it. https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search
You can also use Whois.com which is a free service that will tell you who owns a particular URL and how long it has been in service.  If your Walmart website has only been around six months and is owned by someone in Nigeria, it certainly is a scam.  Here is a link to Whois  https://whois.domaintools.com/
Finally, look for reviews of the particular site and Google the name of it with the word “scam” and see what comes up.

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