iPhone 4 Mail (Allegedly) Hijacked by SMS

Question

Level 1

8 points

iPhone 4 Mail (Allegedly) Hijacked by SMS

I received a very strange "spam" text message yesterday (NOT the black box) that had a spam message, a link and came from a very strange phone number. I immediately deleted this text message and did NOT go to the link.

About 10 minutes later, my gmail account starting spamming people in my contacts list seemingly from my iPhone.

Now, before I go any further:
- I do not log into my e-mail account anywhere except from my iPhone and my Mac at home.
- I use a characteristically "strong" password, so I know my password was not "guessed" or "hacked".

I say that my iPhone was "hijacked" because I was chatting with a friend at the time who informed me that they just received a spam message from me so I immediately changed my gmail password. After I changed the password, I deleted the mail account from my iPhone yet messages continued to be sent (even AFTER I had changed my password).

Eventually I turned my phone OFF and that stopped the messages. I rebooted the phone and the messages have not been sent since the reboot. Can anyone tell me what happened, please? And if Apple has some sort of fix for this in the works?

Thanks!
Kiffy

iPhone 4, iOS 4

Posted on Mar 30, 2011 11:02 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 7, 2011 10:42 PM in response to Kifford

within 1 week of getting a new iPhone 4 , all of the contacts in my address book started recieving spam with nothing in the subject line, just a http link in the body of the email. I use 2 other computers to access my emails , but they are both turned off at the time these spams seem to go out. I presume it is comming via the iPhone as it is the only new component of my browsing environment ,and the other 2 PCs have good current security software. i can only conclude that malware has entered the iPhone, ?? via and app, and is being used to send spam

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Answer 2

May 7, 2011 8:15 AM in response to Kifford

I had this exact same problem, starting about 30 minutes ago. I got a message from 1 (410) 000-001 with a strange message that included a square, and then suddenly my yahoomail inbox was flooded with returned messages, and the friend who I was with confirmed that he recieved a message from me that was also sent to a group of people from my mailbox, apparently in alphabetical order. I turned off my phone, changed my mail password, but I have no way to confirm if the messages have stopped. Have you heard anything back, or has anyone else had this problem?

Thanks,

Jacob

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Answer 3

Dec 28, 2012 5:54 PM in response to Kifford

Same thing with my iPhone this morning. Received a text message and deleted it without clicking it. Emails went out through my gmail to my contacts. The spam was a work from home for money site.

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Answer 4

Sk8Dreams

Level 3

900 points

Dec 28, 2012 6:19 PM in response to Binglesworth

There is no documented worm, trojan, or virus that has infected a non-jailbroken iPhone. If you jailbroke your phone, you are vulnerable.

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Answer 5

Dec 28, 2012 6:33 PM in response to Sk8Dreams

It isn't jailbroken. I posted my full question under https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4643090 . I saw this one after I posted mine. Should I take my phone to Verizon or Apple to take a look at it?

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