How do I know if my iPhone is hacked

A non-jailbroken phone cannot be hacked. Why do you think you were hacked?

I recvd a notification may phone has been hacked

It hasn't. Just a bogus website trying to get your details.

Answer75 wrote:

Was sent an email from a Wesley with a pdf when I opened it there was my name address and phone number also a picture of my house. This person asked for money or he would send info and pictures of me to my contacts which he said he had access to. Never heard of this name. It was like black mail. I deleted this email. Do you know what may be going on?

Welcome to 2024, and to scammers using widely-available data from previous breaches, and using data from web services such as Google Street View, with what amounts to a mail-merge.

Some reading:

• Recognize and avoid social engineering schemes including phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support
• (From 2018) https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/07/sextortion-scam-uses-recipients-hacked-passwords/
• https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/09/sextortion-scams-now-include-photos-of-your-home/

Email sending addresses, and text messages and phone call calling numbers can all be spoofed / faked / forged, too.

And a whole lot of data about you is now collected and available, and too often then breached, as most places outside the EU have little regulation around data privacy.

You will absolutely also encounter businesses and organizations and individuals which will absolutely bald-faced lie to you to their benefit, too.

How do I know that.

Run Safety Check. It's long and boring, but it will give your phone a clean bill of health.

How Safety Check on iPhone works to keep you safe - Apple Support

True. And there is a non-zero probability that monkeys will come out of my bum… I’d say that’s only very slightly less likely than your phone getting hacked.

The only way your iPhone can be hacked is by you hacking it yourself by intentionally removing all security protections. It’s called “jaibreaking” and if you don’t know what that means you don’t need to worry about being hacked.

Most of the sob stories are published by companies trying to sell you their anti-virus software.

A few things have happened that makes me believe that my phone may not be hacked but cloned. Photos are cropped/downloaded. Search function location and devices always appear with info and the next second the info suddenly disappears. Just to mention a few things

By all means mention a few things but if you want help, or even someone to understand you, you're going to need to offer some context. Remember we can't see your device or read your mind.

Your phone is not hacked, but you can confirm once more when you run Safety Check on your iPhone.

How Safety Check on iPhone works to keep you safe - Apple Support

Ongelooflik wrote:

A few things have happened that makes me believe that my phone may not be hacked but cloned. Photos are cropped/downloaded. Search function location and devices always appear with info and the next second the info suddenly disappears. Just to mention a few things

Has anyone had access to your phone while it was unlocked? If not, your phone hasn't been cloned.

However, it's possible that your Apple ID has been compromised.

If you think your Apple ID has been compromised - Apple Support

any device that can connect to the internet has the potential to get hacked.

All such messages are scams to be ignored.

It’s a common scam. It actually made the national news a few days ago.

Ignore it. The picture came from google street view.

A few things have happened that makes me believe that my phone may not be hacked but cloned. Photos are cropped/downloaded. Search function location and devices always appear with info and the next second the info suddenly disappears. Just to mention a few things

Ameliababy4568 wrote:

How do I know if my iPhone is hacked

For the original and year-old posting that was re-activated by some newer activity…

That question is difficult to answer. Arguably, impossible.

Difficult? Impossible?

There are very common advertisements that lie about hacking and viruses. These ads are very common.

There are some cases where the iPhone is hacked, and with no evidence of compromise.

There are also cases where the iPhone is compromised, and shows some (varied) evidence of compromise.

Actually-hacked iPhone devices are still quite rare, particularly if you haven’t been allowing others to access your Apple ID, your device passcode, and your device.

Complicating all of this, your iPhone is old enough (A11 and older processors) to have some known and available exploits, though these require access to your device.

And yet further complicating all of this, your iOS is too old to offer tools such as Safety Check and Lockdown mode.

For the newer posting in this thread:

nazish66 wrote:

I recvd a notification may phone has been hacked

Yeah, those are folks that are trying to hack or to scam you, by convincing you into doing something you probably shouldn’t.

There are lots of “you’ve been hacked” ads, and there are ads (including Goolge ads and search results) that will try to convince you to do things you shouldn’t.

This includes sketchy “support” sites, unnecessary add-on “security” tools, privacy-sapping add-on VPN apps, and folks that “just” want to gain access to your iPhone or your Mac to pillage your info.