How do Facebook Messenger (and Instagram Message) Link scams work?

Every day large numbers of Facebook users receive a message that appears to be from a friend that invites them to click a link. If they click that link their Facebook friends (social graph connections) receive a similar message -- from them.

Many of the victims post on Facebook that their account has been hacked and that recipients should disregard the message. Most change their account passwords, some close their account.

So how does this work?

It's the old "enter password' trick -- a phishing attack. If you click on the link a Facebook screen asks to verify your account identity. This, of course, is a fake page. The credentials you enter there are used to send messages from your Facebook account.

The attackers don't try to change your password, they just send messages to recruit new credentials. There are lots of scams that can be run using Facebook or Instagram messages so this is a profitable business.

Just change your password and try not to be tricked again.

Things I learned switching from Spotify to Apple Music

I'll keep adding to this list. For historic reasons going back over 10 years all my owned music is under one Apple ID and my iCloud services are under another. 3/5 family members use the same Store Apple ID. Because of the way family sharing works that legacy Apple ID is a six family member.

• On the individual plan you can stream to one device at a time. On the family plan you can stream to up to 6 devices at one time. On the individual plan if two devices share the same Store Apple ID only one can stream at a time. (I think you can play Music you own on more than one device.)
• If you are on a free plan and upgrade to family plan you don't get any special credit, just go to full price.
• When you do upgrade from the Music app (good luck figuring this out) you get the monthly $15 renewal. There's no yearly discount.
• I think music that you have in legacy iTunes that is not part of Apple's library is uploaded and available. For example (from 2003!). I don't know if I play from streaming if I get this one or a newer version.

• In addition to iTunes you can use music.apple.com to access your library on a Mac.
• FreeYourMusic.app on iOS $10 works pretty well to transfer Spotify playlists to Apple Music. The $10 is a lifelong subscription but it is not family shared.
• When you cancel Spotify you revert to ad-supported Spotify, your playlists don't go away.
• To Share Playlists you need to create a Profile.
• Apple Music includes iTunes Match

Additional notes on results of moving Emily from using a shared Store Apple ID to her iCloud Apple ID for media and purchases given family sharing:

• Playlists that were on her phone seemed to stay on her phone
• Downloads on her phone are still there and they synced to the Cloud
• Still TBD how this will impact movies, apps, etc given family sharing (our legacy shared Store Apple ID is a 'family member').

How to add an Apple Store order to your Apple ID after purchasing as guest

I finally ordered my iPhone 13 Pro -- but even though the Apple Store web view showed a link to my account the order was processed as a guest order.

I found there's a way to add to the order to my Apple Store account. You need to know the order number, the phone number used, and the email used.

From your account page,  choose Your Orders. Since your order doesn't show, choose "Find it Now". This displays the Order Lookup Screen. Enter the order information and you will be given the option to add it to your Apple ID account.

Relentless beeping when plug iPhone into MacBook USB port: reset iPhone Location and Privacy

Solved 9/12/2022

I wrote the post below when I used an iPhone 8. When I went to an iPhone 13 it seemed to resolve, but today I tried charging my iPhone from my Air and it was beeping again.

I didn't have time to waste so I switched to a normal charger, but later it occurred to me that there might be a way to reset the trust relationship.

There is, but it's not on the iTunes side. It's on the iPhone side.

If you don't want to trust a computer or other device anymore, change the privacy settings on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset [Device] > Reset > Reset Location & Privacy. Now when you connect to formerly trusted computers, the Trust alert will ask you whether you trust that computer. 

I did the reset on my iPhone and next time I plugged it in to my Mojave Air I got the "do you want to trust" dialog. I accepted it and now the phone charges without beeping. I suspect the problem will recur based on the notes below however.

--

When I plug my iPhone 8 into my MacBook Air's USB port I get relentless beeping and the iPhone power icon flashes. Sometimes iTunes throws up a "received an unexpected response" error. I'm on Mojave iTunes.

I figured this was a bad USB cable or bad port or bad connection, but it's both ports and all cables and the phone connection is good. More importantly, I rebooted with no peripherals connected and switched to my admin account. Then every beep was associated with a new iTunes dialog asking me (yet again, and again, this is such a pain) to authenticate. When the dialogs ended the beeping stopped.

Stack Exchange has an article on this, but that's definitely connection issue related. This Apple tech article seems closest; but they also focus on cable issues.

I'm not entirely sure it's not something hardware related on my Air, but I think there's an iTunes component too.

The console shows:

I see: usbmuxsd errors, HandleUSMMuxConnect, iTunes Helper, MobileDeviceUpdater, "no such device". So iTunes is causing the beeps (though the underlying issue could be hardware).

From those clues I found these posts:

• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251691536: kill usbmuxsd related processes
• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6611777?answerId=27079314022#27079314022 - a bug in usbmuxsd that Apple may have fixed in later releases
• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6728641?answerId=6728641021#6728641021 has a discussion:

It's an iTunes 12 bug... Not sure who's responsible for usbmuxd at Apple, but they should be fired! This was extensively discussed and worked out here: itunes 12 will not recognize iphone

All credit to oskapt, who's post detailed the entire issue. The short version is a recent version of usbmuxd has a programming error that leads it to never close any connection. At the same time, it's constantly making new connections too. The end result is this background process actually hits the built-in UNIX limit on open connections by a single process (to prevent bugs like this from ultimately crashing an entire computer), and is blocked by design from functioning after that point. Once usbmuxd fails, iTunes can't see your iOS devices.

The fix is to quit usbmuxd, either via Activity Monitor or Terminal. It will automatically relaunch, and work again until it hits the limit. That thread has several suggestions for automated scripts to run every 24-48 hours to prevent this.

Update 2/20/22: I never solved this problem, but I did get a new phone and the beeping is gone. So either a connection problem with the old iPhone or a bug with the "trust relationship" between iPhone and MacBook.

Update 3/5/2022: In the process of cleaning out old iPhones I tried various iPhones and I tried iPhones that beeped on my Mojave iTunes machine on a different machine. I think it's a bug with establishing a Trust relationship. Probably fixed in later versions of iTunes.

How to remote (push) install a xbox store purchase to xbox from Mac

I couldn't find out how to push an xbox game install to the console with Google searches. Here's what I learned on my own.

1. Go to xbox store.
2. Login
3. From profile picture choose 'My Microsoft Account' 
4. Click Order History
5. Click on appropriate order
6. The bold text below the order number is actually a link. It's evidently a secret
7. Click on the link (Resident Evil ...)
8. You'll the item description in the store. There's a button to push install.

Family sharing screen time bug: a fix for ghost apps

I'm happy to say I actually fixed a bug in the buggiest apple product ever - family sharing screen time.

The "always allowed" app list showed "ghost apps" -- left over apps from old versions of iOS like Find Friend. They appeared with a generic icon.

Removing my son from the family then adding him back in removed the ghost apps.

One bug down, dozens remain.

Update: Nope, the fix was transitory. Ghost apps back again. Screen Time is such a cluster.

Update: Ok, this might be the real fix. His Apple ID had 3 associated devices -- and iPad, and iPhone and a macOS user account on an old machine running maybe Sierra.  I removed the obsolete macOS relationship from his Apple ID on the web site, but it had to be remove again on his iPad.

Apple Mac App Store: "Unable to download item. Please try again later": The problem may be that you are not the purchaser.

I was logged into my admin account on my daughter's Big Sur Air and saw the usual nag to update Apps. When I tried though I got  "Unable to download item. Please try again later."

It never works to try again later. This is a typically useless Apple error message produced when something has gone wrong with their complex FairPlay DRM authentication. There are a range of fixes that Google shows but, even after I figured out the bug (a design fail of this sort is a bug) I couldn't find anything that explained the fix [1]. So here you go!

The problem happens on a multi-user Mac with multiple admins installing software using different Apple Store Apple IDs. It might also require that automatic updates are not enabled and it might require that Family Sharing is enabled.

Every admin gets notification of a pending update, but only the FairPlay determined DRM owner can actually successfully do the update. Other admins who try get the useless error message.

The fix on Big Sur's Mac App Store is to cast your gaze down to the bottom left corner of the App Store window. There you see a user name. Click on the user name and you'll see an "Account" screen. At the top of the "Account" screen is a "Purchased by" drop down with the user name of every family sharing member [1]. Switch between Accounts here to find who has the "update" for the problem app. Then update. Continue until all apps are updated.

It will be interesting to see if this is handled better in Monterey. I can imagine several potential fixes!

[1] As every Old will repeat ad nauseam, the Google web was much better 20 years ago.