14 DAY TRIAL // “Don't be duped into believing there's an easy way to get one for free,” warns Graham Cluley, security consultant at Sophos. “The iPad 3 doesn't exist yet.”
Writing over at the Naked Security Blog that he regularly maintains with updates for the Apple fan base, Graham Cluley is sounding the alarm on a new scam that attempts to capitalize on the hype surrounding Apple’s impending iPad 3 announcement scheduled for next week.
Cluley is a pretty well-listed security researcher, which means there’s some added weight to his warning that “we are seeing plenty of examples of Facebook pages and tweets that appear to be attempting to trick users into thinking they can get [an iPad 3] for free.”
“As Apple hasn't even announced the existence of an iPad 3, these posts and pages (some of which have existed for months) are clearly up to no good,” he writes. “It would be great to see social networks like Facebook and Twitter do more to clean up such clearly dubious activity, to better protect their userbase.”
He concludes, saying, “Chances are that we will see Apple announce an iPad 3 very soon. But don't be duped into believing there's an easy way to get one for free.”
Keeping it short for our readers, you can safely turn a blind eye to pretty much every “offer” that allegedly yields free Apple gadgets. As for the iPad 3 in particular, it’s probably best if you just wait for Tim Cook to announce the thing, then go out and buy it fair and square.
And if you simply must get a deal on your purchase, consider selling your old Apple gear to the fine blokes at Gazelle. They’ll pay hard cash for pretty much any gizmo worth re-using (not necessarily with an Apple logo on it).