erroneous request for facetime by my mom's gmail account

[orchidlady]

Got a panicked email message from a friend back home who I rarely email. She received a facetime request on her iphone from my mother's gmail account. Friend was concerned something had happened to me. 

 

My mother has a mac computer but does not even have my friend's mobile phone numbers and certainly has not emailed her while I have been in Thailand,  over 10 years. My mother has about 10 contacts in her gmail account and does not have a smart phone.

Did someone hack into my friend's phone/ i cloud account ?  Before I contact my mother about this want to try to understand what happened. I don't have mac and don't have an iphone so not familiar with facetime requests, etc.

Any thoughts?

[RichCor]

While an Apple or iCloud ID can 'consist' of any email address as the username, Apple's FaceTime application is an apple-only product and requests can only be initiated from other Apple products.

 

It''s possible someone else was using (or even fixing?) your mother's computer and tried to test the FaceTime application for whatever reason using the email or phone number probably already stored in apple contacts.

 

Here are some 'howto' articles on FaceTime for a quick cliffnotes:

 

Use FaceTime with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
Learn how to use FaceTime to make video and audio calls from your iOS devices.

support.apple.com
FaceTime: The ultimate guide

How do you use FaceTime to make audio and video calls to anyone with an iPhone, iPad, or Mac? Easily!
iMore.com  |  By RENE RITCHIE  |  Wednesday, Nov 30, 2016