I clicked on a link in what I think I was an sms phishing scam. I didn’t enter any personal or financial details and deleted the page and my safari search history immediately. But is it possible that my iPhone could now have malware on it? Seems to be a lot of conflicting info re this. Thanks!
iPhone 11
toadc wrote:
I received several fake SMS texts “your iPhone 12 has been located “. Trying to get my appke ID & password. My phone was lost/stolen/replaced last month & immediately placed in lost mode. There’re trying to unlock & sell it with socially engineered rouge FindMyiPhone techniques
Yeah; that’s a separate mess from that described above, and phishing calls and phishing texts from “Apple” or from the ”Police” are a common part of a lost iPhone. (Somewhat perversely, those calls imply that Activation Lock is fairly reliable as a deterrent, too.)
And some updated info for my posting above that’s become known since that reply was posted, one of the vendors of spyware for iPhone and iPad was found to be persisting their malware using automator actions. A reboot won’t clear it, but there’ll also be some (unexpected) automator actions around.
And if you are one of the sorts of people listed in my earlier reply, you really want to get some more specialized advice around security, as app or iPhone crashes or hangs, or excessive battery usage, or odd texts can all be indications of trouble.
If your iPhone is patched to current, and if you’re not (for instance) an investigative journalist, political dissident, someone with access to sensitive or classified information, a political opponent of somebody very rich and powerful, etc. then malware is unlikely.
If you are a target, then yes, SMS has been one vector used for infecting iPhone and iPad. Based on what’s been known and found about these campaigns, very rarely used, too.
Of what has been reported, restarting the iPhone or iPad has been enough to disable most of the malware. Much of what has been used has (deliberately) not been persistent (i.e. won’t survive a restart), and the malware has been reintroduced as needed. This particularly happening with the zero-click malware. Which was not the case here.
If you are not a target… What will happen here are more scams and more phishing. You made yourself more valuable to the scammers and those they sell info to. They’ll be (re)selling your telephone number as one that connects to somebody, and that will click.
Set all unrecognized senders to mute, and best avoid becoming mad or curious or panicked or fearful whatever means the advertisers try to use to get you to do what they want.
Phishing and scams are common: Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support
I received several fake SMS texts “your iPhone 12 has been located “. Trying to get my appke ID & password. My phone was lost/stolen/replaced last month & immediately placed in lost mode. There’re trying to unlock & sell it with socially engineered rouge FindMyiPhone techniques
Sms phishing scam
