Being tracked by a hacker

If the “hacker” is Google or Meta or any other organization with a “share this on” website badge, sure, they’re definitely tracking you.

As for that pop-up, they’re advertising an app that contains the tracking, if it’s the usual VPN apps being advertised. They want you to install the tracking. Yeah, advertisers lie. Welcome to 2026.

As others have stated, ignore the advertisement.

Info on some of the many scams:

• Virus Warning! What to do! - Apple Community
• Recognizing Apple Pay Fraud Report Scams - Apple Community
• Scam Pop-ups, Scam Viruses, Scam Receipts… - Apple Community

That is, of course, a scam. Delete it and move on.

You will see those types of advertisements on websites that are less than legitimate. The website was paid to show you that message and a website that prioritizes their users over the money paid to them will be more selective on the advertisements they choose. Unfortunately it is those types of scare tactics that are more profitable when it comes to advertising dollars.

If you remember which app they were trying to get you to download, report it to Apple. The developer should be banned from the App Store and have their developer license revoked.

True. Now that you say it, I think this did come up a while back. A competitor makes their spam point to a competitor's app when that other person had nothing to do with the spam. All to try and get the other person's app pulled.

Kurt Lang wrote:

If you remember which app they were trying to get you to download, report it to Apple. The developer should be banned from the App Store and have their developer license revoked.

That unfortunately won’t work well, if it works at all, as it’ll likely provoke ads for competing products as a means to knock those other products out of the app store.