A distant relative of mine was in quite a panic the other day. She received over 300 subscription confirmation emails within 10 minutes. Obviously, she wasn’t signing up for any emails.
I asked her to forward some of the messages to me and they were from all over the world in English, Spanish, and languages I couldn’t even recognize the alphabet for. Of course, her first instinct was to start clicking on the unsubscribe links in the emails.
Why? Because of the panic reflex we’ve talked about before. That’s how scammers get you to click without thinking. They cause you to panic. Clicking on the unsubscribe link in the email could very easily take you to a page that could download ransomware or other types of spyware onto your device.
I’d suggest waiting to see if you actually receive newsletters from any of these places. This sounds like a classic phishing attempt to misdirect you to a fake site. Apple issued a warning about a similar scam where users were notified they’d been subscribed to an expensive subscription service. Of course, folks hurried to tap and unsubscribe. I’ve also received scam phone calls where they say they are confirming my subscription to an expensive tech support service and if I don’t want the subscription I need to call them.
Always think before you click. Don’t let panic lead you down the road to doing something that could wreck your device.