Is my IPhone hacked ?

Brian_Dang wrote:

Thanks for your response ! But I can be sure that they hacked into my phone, just how much and what they can get…

They have just described very accurately what I did on my phone

The “pervert” spam and many other similar creative-writing efforts are all seeking free cash are ubiquitous scams. They will provide sufficiently vague descriptions of common activities, and the recipient can then fill in with their own details, as is common among scammers and con artists.

They won’t provide the actual proof — the claimed compromising photos or videos — as they don't have that.

Because it’s creative fiction.

If they had the photos or videos they claimed, they’d show it.

A version from 2018, which included breached password data:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/07/sextortion-scam-uses-recipients-hacked-passwords/

Some more recent “mail merge” versions with Google Street View, or adding some other breached data:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/09/sextortion-scams-now-include-photos-of-your-home/

I’m not sure it’s actually even possible to contact these folks, if making that contact was even advisable. And contact is not something I would suggest. Run some web searches for keywords from the message, and also for the cryptocurrency wallet address. You should find lots of discussions.

Mark this as spam, and more on with your day.

If this isn’t the usual mass creative-fiction-mass-solicitation spam, then you have a matter for the police.

Delete the message and move on. It’s a scam.

Unless your iPhone has been jailbroken or someone at a high level of security service was able to physically obtain access to your phone, it's very unlikely that it's actually been hacked. More likely they were able to get your Apple ID and/or other personal information and were able to access your accounts and information that way. Your address and phone number are very easy to obtain by any number of routes that don't even involve getting your login information, much less hacking your phone.

In any case, if someone was able to gain access to your photos and other personal information, by whatever means, then there's no way to know what they have and what they might do with it. But as the other posters suggested, if you think you want to respond to this email (not recommended), insist that they send you proof that they have your data beyond just what could easily be found in public archives.

But as Mac Jim said, it's very likely that it's a scam. These crooks create generic messages that include the sorts of things they think someone might be embarassed about, then blast these messages out to thousands of people hoping to hit someone that would have a guilty conscience and trigger them. I've seen a number of these, and they all basically said the same things that you report, and all of them were a complete scam.

There's not much more anyone here can say. All you can do is report the extortion attempt to the police, though there's almost certainly nothing they can do.

Regards.

It is a scam! The whole purpose is to scare you and they want money from you. It is the oldest trick in the book and you should not fall for it.

Ask them for proof they have photos. A blackmailer will produce one or two. A scammer will bluff and try to just convince you they have photos, but can’t produce a real photo of yours.

The same scam email is sent out to thousands of people with hopes that it will scare a small percentage of people into believing it is true. Out of that small percentage of people that believe it, they just need a few of those to send them money. It costs them nothing to send the messages and just need to watch their BitCoin accounts grow.

And in addition to what Jeff Donald suggested, if the person does actually does send photos, make sure they are ones you haven't posted publicly like on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.