iPhone users are being targeted by a series of viral videos warning that their financial data can be stolen by a nearby hacker—all without them realizing. TikTok is just weeks away from a U.S. ban, absent a last-minute rescue from Donald Trump or the Supreme Court. And while its 170 million stateside users await their fate, here’s a timely reminder as to how it even beats Facebook in creating a viral storm.
As first reported by Daily Dot, “Apple Pay users with AirDrop toggled on are rendering themselves susceptible to financial identity theft.” The theory is that if this setting is enabled, a walk-by tap-attack from a stranger in the street prompts an instant, hidden data transfer from your iPhone to theirs, including your credit cards.
The issue? That setting does not exist and the story is complete nonsense. But that hasn’t stopped millions of TikTokers turning nothing into something.”It’s unclear what the source of the rumor is,” Apple Insider says, “but creators are directing users to head to settings to disable AirDrop sharing.”
Relax—not only is there no always-on with everyone Airdrop setting, but even if there was this isn’t how it works. You can choose to Airdrop with any nearby device but only for 10 minutes at a time, other than that it’s either off or limited to your contacts only. More critically, the Apple Wallet / Apple Pay credit and other card and other card data held by your device is locked down and would not be shareable even if this was a real issue—which, to emphasize again, it is not.
“Not only would that be a huge liability for Apple,” Apple Insider says, “but it wouldn’t be a particularly useful feature in the first place.” The nearest risk would be the express tap-to-pay feature that Apple Pay offers to simplify public transit without having to double-press or use biometric authentication each time. We have seen reports into fraudulent tap-to-pay modules looking to catch users out, but even if this happened it would charge your card a small amount, it would not capture any data.
Apple Pay is more secure than your real wallet, “designed to protect your personal information… Apple doesn’t store or have access to the original credit, debit, or prepaid card numbers that you use with Apple Pay.”
When you add a credit card, your bank sends Apple “a device-specific Device Account Number, encrypts it, and sends it along with other data (such as the key used to generate dynamic security codes that are unique to each transaction) to Apple… The Device Account Number in the Secure Element is isolated from iOS, is never stored on Apple servers, and is never backed up to iCloud.”
Beyond Apple Pay, if we’re talking Apple Wallet, then “iCloud secures your Wallet data — like passes and transaction information — by encrypting it when it’s sent over the Internet and storing it in an encrypted format when it’s kept on Apple’s servers”
Are there potential threats with wireless sharing of data’s—especially imagery—through AirDrop and its equivalents—yes, inevitably. And we have seen reports into cyber flashing in the past. Your financial information though, is not one of them.
Daily Dot thinks the roots of this story date back to the 2023 iPhone update to enable NameDrop. This is a simple proximity data exchange between iPhones, but just for contact cards—envisaged aa s modern–day, touch-free business card update.
But engagement farming TikTokers are now jumping on the story and making their own videos, these are then being shared and copied again and again. Which is exactly how nothing becomes something.
So please ignore this TikTok nonsense—at least until January 19, when it might not be available to you anyway. Don’t watch the videos and certainly don’t share them. That just fuels the viral mess. Apple Pay and similar, locked behind a phone’s biometrics, are materially safer than physical cards and should become your default.
AirDrop, meanwhile, should be left off and only enabled when you want to send or receive information. Not because your financial data is at risk from a walk-by, but just because these small security hygiene factors simply make your phone safer.
