Well, that didn't take long: Apple had barely finished formally unveiling its new iPhone6 earlier this month before various scammers started using the lure of the latest-gen iPhone as bait for their latest schemes.
The single most important thing to remember, to avoid being taken in by any of these scams, is this: If you want a new iPhone6 between now and the December holiday season, the best place to look is an Apple store. Nobody's giving away free iPhone6s on Facebook, and if you want to win one in a raffle, for Zod's sake don't buy into any raffle demanding your Social Security number, bank account information, or other data of the sort identity thieves use.
First of all: don't trust anyone on Facebook asking you to “like” or visit a page for a chance to win a free iPhone (or any other prize, come to think of it). The Better Business Bureau warned about the iPhone 6 Facebook scam after the Hoax Slayer website first discovered it.
Recommended by a "friend"
What makes this latest Facebook scams so insidious is that hackers make it appear as though the pages were recommended by one of your Facebook “friends,” which in turn makes you more likely to trust it. In reality, it's more likely that your friend's account got hacked, possibly without her even knowing about it.
The scam is also playing out over email: you get a message, either from an obvious stranger or possibly from a friend's spoofed account, offering you the chance to win a new iPhone6 if you send your personal information of the sort which an identity thief would find useful. Or you might be asked to open an attachment, download a file or click on a link, any of which will result in dangerous malware getting on your computer. But, of course, you already know never to download any unsolicited file or click an unsolicited link.
The third possibility is – not technically a “scam,” but definitely a bad bargain: officials from the Better Business Bureau in Louisville, Southern Indiana, and Western Kentucky said that they found online sellers offering iPhone 6s at prices far higher than what Apple stores were charging. (At the same time, be extra-skeptical of any seller offering an iPhone6 at a suspiciously low price; always remember the anti-scam rule “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”)