The Smith County Sheriff’s Office has received several complaints recently that residents are again being targeted by scammers.

The newest scam is targeting “Apple accounts.” The scammers say that a person’s Apple account has been compromised and ask the targeted victim to call a telephone number or follow a link to fix the problem.

The scam works a couple of different ways

• Someone calls pretending to be from Apple claiming that there has been a breach in the system — and they need personal information to verify the account.

• Scammers send an email or text that appears to be from Apple saying that the account has been the victim of a breach and the Apple ID account needs to be reset by clicking on the link provided in the message.

If the link is clicked on, it immediately gives the scammers access to the Apple account, including any stored personal information and payment information.

In the scam phone call, the caller claims to be from Apple’s support team and tries to trick the unsuspecting victim into handing over access to his or her computer or account over the phone.

How to protect against from similar scams

Here is a general rule of thumb for avoiding these types of scams: Do not click on any link in any email or text message that is unexpected.

If there’s a chance that there’s a legitimate message or notification, go directly to the official website of whatever business it is and check for any notifications there.

The department advises against opening messages from an unknown number — delete them! Don’t open them, don’t click anything — just delete it. It’s better to be safe than sorry.