Can a virus be transferred to another iPhone through backup?

What you got is a Phishing Scam. You don't have a virus on your phone, UNLESS you jailbroke it.

See this link about avoiding Phishing Scams and know that if you were planning to restore your phone because of this, you likely don't need to do that at all --> Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support

As noted above, it's a scam. A simple popup ad from a web page or app designed to con you into downloading something you don't need (or want) or into calling someone for "support" and getting fleeced.

Close the page/app and ignore it.

If you restore a backup, it won't have a virus because the device you backed up never had one to begin with. Besides, even if that were the case, applications are not part of the backup. They are re-downloaded from the App Store as part of the restore process.

villani59 wrote:

So, the message that I received "You have 13 viruses" is false ?

... and you can confirm that I can restore on my new iPhone 12 and I won't have virus ?

Yes, but if you clicked on a link in the message and installed software or entered your Apple ID and password, or a credit card, your identity has been compromised and money has been stolen from you.

Hopefully you did not respond to that message in any way.

You don’t have viruses. They don’t send you a message saying “hey you have viruses”. You, of course, have a phishing message. The rest on here are right.

Responding to phishing emails/messages can lead to identity theft and could even pave the way for malware. I was done like a dinner by a very personalised email to me in my academic capacity, with a review template doc that turned out to be not what it seemed.

So at this point, with a phishing message, the worse thing you can do is engage with it in anyway. It’s getting this step wrong that can let bad things happen.

The responders on this thread are right.

not sure whether others would agree- but I’ve personally found it a bit safer to not automatically download attachments to messages such as images. Maybe I’m going overboard, but I prefer to check the message can be trusted first (unless it’s from my usual trusted contacts etc)

Oh and the Malwarebytes iOS app has a filtering feature to help catch such things in re spam calls and suspicious sms. Might be worth checking out.

so that may help stop phishing type stuff but of course at the end of the day being careful with what you click on or respond to is most important.

and stay up to date. When apple releases updates get them, or set them to automatically install. That for me is really important

cheerio

Thank you. Part of Apple’s resilience against malware is it’s updates. So in as much as it encourages users to use those updates I think it helps to acknowledge that issues can happen, that’s one of the reasons why updates are important.

I mean when I ring mum from the antipodes and say please update to 14.6, it’s a slightly stronger argument to point out to her that it patches potential exploits. I doubt I would get her attention if I simply said you get new emojis.

Macs are safe but please update… I hope you understand what I mean. It’s a strength of Apple that they response and patch any potential exploits so quickly. It’s important users are encouraged to adopt those updates. I hope this makes sense.

Sorry, but your question is meaningless.

There are no known viruses in the wild that can affect an iPhone that has not been jailbroken.

Good advice