Growing Number of Users Receiving Spam Group FaceTime Calls
As reported by Ars Technica, a significant number of Apple device users are being bombarded with spam group FaceTime calls during late hours of the night from people they've never met.
The spammers, or "pranksters," utilize the fact that Apple doesn't provide a setting to accept FaceTime calls only from people within a user's address book. Apple does allow users to block individual numbers, but doing so does not prevent group FaceTime calls, even if the blocked number is in the call. As explained by Ars Technica, some users have been getting inundated with the group FaceTime calls, and as soon as they hang-up, another call comes in.
As described by one Apple Support forum user, the spam calls have been ongoing non-stop, and as a result, they've blocked more than 300 numbers. Another user describes their experience:
Starting around 2 am this morning I began receiving group FaceTime calls from a mix of numbers in my contacts and random numbers I didn't have saved. Since then I've received about 7 more calls throughout the day. The calls only ring once or twice before ending. What's even more interesting is that, after going back through the numbers involved in the calls in the "recents" tab of the FaceTime app, there were more than the 32 total people involved with the highest being 59. The reason I think this happened is that every number was repeated once or twice.
It seems this is not a new occurrence, with posts dating back as far as March of last year complaining about the issue. Unfortunately, there's no current remedy, but hopefully the growing number of users reportedly being targeted will push Apple to provide a solution. We've reached out to Apple for comment and will update this article if we hear back.
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