Has my iPhone been hacked?

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Level 1

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Has my iPhone been hacked?

I have had my iPhone 13 mini for 1 year and 1/2, but ever since I got it I have had issues with it. From the first fortnight it began overheating for no apparent reason and I took it to 2 separate apple stores during that time, who kept it overnight but were unable to fix it. Since then the problems have only gotten weirder. One instance is when I power off my phone. When it turns back on it will go onto the lock screen, only the camera icon goes dull and when I swipe up to use my Face ID the screen immediately goes back onto the black screen with the loading circle for about 5 minutes until it goes completely black and the apple logo appears again. The only thing that fixes this is connecting it to my MacBook, but this continues to happen around every 3 months. Also now I am reaching the end of my storage limit. I am trying to delete storage, but every time I check to see how much storage I have it is nearly the same as before. I deleted over 100 photos at the same time and it added 0.1 MB of used storage! I can’t use most of my apps and it is causing me stress at the thought of losing all of my existing data on my current phone. I work on my phone. I am reluctant to transfer things to another device in case it has been hacked at some point - I know iPhones don’t get hacked, but I don’t know what else this could be. Please help!!!

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPhone 8, iOS 14

Posted on Aug 16, 2023 10:22 AM

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Answer 1

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IdrisSeabright

Community+ 2026

Level 10

189,057 points

Aug 16, 2023 10:32 AM in response to This_Is_Me_

Unless you have jailbroken your phone (which can cause all sorts of problems) or someone has had access to your unlocked phone for a considerable period of time or you are a high-profile journalist, politician, or activist whose data would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire, you have almost certainly not been hacked. Most things that go wrong with technology have nothing to do with hackers.

When you say your phone was "overheating", what do you mean? Do you mean you got the message on your phone that it was overheating and shutting down until it cooled off? Unless you did, what you probably experienced was normal heating caused by charging or using apps that pull a lot of battery.

It also sounds as if you may have a hardware problem with your camera.

Unless you also empty the deleted items folder, deleting photos will have little effect until after 30 days.

I suggest you restore your iPhone to factory settings (after backing it up, of course), preferably using a computer and then testing it. If it works fine, try restoring your backup and see how it goes. If restoring the backup causes problems, something in your data is corrupted. It it works fine, you will probably just need to get the camera looked at.

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings - Apple Support

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