How do i get rid of a iPhone Virus?

I have now for the second time a strange virus on my Iphone 5, iOs 6.1.4 It opens randomly the pre-installed apple apps like Newsstand, Settings, Notes etc. and changes settings there. The first time I had it, it sent a message with "awkward" to one of my contacts. This time it changed my wallpaper. I haven't jailbreaked my iPhone. How do I get rid of this ****? It seems to help to switch the Wifi off. A reset of the settings did work the first time but not now. Thanks for your help!

iPhone 5, iOS 6.1.4

Posted on Aug 12, 2013 3:28 AM

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220 replies

Jan 31, 2014 5:00 AM in response to XP45

It's that site, then. Forum software can be prone to such issues, since a forum is designed to accept input from users and then display it for other users. A malicious person can set up a fake user, then embed malicious code in their posts. This is very common. Unethical advertising outfits will farm out this kind of work to people whose jobs are just to sit there posting convincing-looking posts with hidden (or not-so-hidden) advertising over and over again on forums and in comment sections on blogs. You should see the spam that my own blog software filters out!


The Genius Bar won't search your phone. There's nothing for them to find, in the first place. Plus, they don't have the time or the expertise to do such a search, even if there were something to find. At most, they will advise you to wipe your phone back to factory settings, which would just be a complete waste of your time in this case.

Mar 13, 2014 3:31 PM in response to SuperNMY

I know this post is pretty old, but I have something to say to people arriving here with similar conditions. I have a retired iPhone 4 (now serves as iPod touch) that had screen detection issues. It had one column of sensor that would detect your "touch" from inches away. And by inches away I don't mean the wrong part of the screen, I mean it would happen when you weren't touching the screen at all, but just hovering your hand in the air over the phone. It seems that this individual could tell pretty well that this was not a detection issue, but if you are experiencing any issues similar to this, one troubleshooting step that you could take is to download a drawing application. One that you can doodle in. Open it up when the phone is acting up, and see if any patterns arise (mine was a solid thin vertical line through the right quarter of the screen that drew itself in as you passed your hand over it). If nothing comes up or it closes the application and opens others, then who knows what's going on, just start resetting things of escalating pertinence like OP did and hope for the best I guess...

Mar 29, 2014 7:28 PM in response to Jamesmeyer

Jamesmeyer wrote:


My wife used to have this same problem when her phone was plugged in too. As soon as it was unplugged the behavior went away. I suspect there were inconsistent electrical impulses from the power source that rendered the screen inoperable. This only happened to us when it was plugged in to the car adaptor.

That probably means a cheap or defective car adapter. Car electrical systems are very "noisy", full of spikes and dropouts. A good quality car adapter will filter them out; a cheap one won't.

Jun 4, 2014 9:27 PM in response to SuperNMY

Sometimes I wish Apple would just delete these threads after they have run their course because I think they do more harm than good. So much hypothesizing from a couple of well intentioned (hopefully) users.


I know it's been a while SuperNMY and you probably have this all straightened out so I am posting this in case someone else comes along who may be having similar issues.

I have seen this very same behavior on my phone. However instead of assuming there was a virus I drew on past experiences to feel at ease about the situation and take corrective action and I am sure that my hunch was correct.


My phone got full and in the background Apple downloaded the IOS update which resulted in even less space available. Like desktop computers there is temp space or swap space used in the course of normal opperation. If the flash drive or the drive on your computer gets too full you can see really strange behaviors. I have seen this many times.


You might even hit several buttons without realzing that each command you were initiating would attempt to run once the phone could catch up but couldn't due to too small of an area to write the commands it had finished using back to disk or to memory (if any was available). So they all ran in sequence making your phone look like it was possessed. With regard to the email getting sent. I have questions for you on that. Do you have a password set on the login screen and if you do, are you POSITIVE no one has ever seen you enter it? That's the most likely explanation. Someone mischieviously sent an email either from your computer or your phone.


So the key question to ask is: "How much storage space is available?" This needs to be one of the first questions you look at during trouble-shooting an issue.


Here is what I did...

1. Went to Settings/Usage/ and checked Storage available. I had 32GB which was nearly full. You will note the spinning circle that indicates it's doing something. Let it finish and it will give you a report on space used by application and how much space each application is using. It will list the applications consuming the most space first. I noted on my device that the first app was a game my daughter was playing and it was unusually large. The first thing I did was to delete that game. After which I closed all apps and power cycled the phone. Response was much better when the phone came back up and I found I could navigate more easily so I went back and started deleting all the stuff that I wasn't using or that was taking up too much space. This included downloading photos and deleting them from the device. (Which is how I roll normally).

2. Look for Apps that use storage space that may not be obvious. Most of them will allow you to move/delete/copy from the Itunes application when you are connected to your Mac. If that's not possible then mail things like recording, PDFs, Photos, etc to an email account or offload them using Phone To Mac or some similar app. There are several and some will even let you do it before you buy the Desktop Application.


Once I had cleaned the phone off of all the unused items I power cycled it again. When the phone came up again it was running great. Commands were executing quickly again. I had to do this same process once more when the IOS 7 update came out because I didn't have enough space to download it. My hunch is that this is what your problem is. You also don't indicate which model of phone you have. If you are trying to run IOS 7 on an iPhone 4, it may not really run well.


That's my .02 cents.

Jun 25, 2014 12:46 PM in response to Jon P

A few thoughts about this thread ... Maybe there aren't virus' for iPhones? I'm not sure about that, but there IS rogue software such as HackingTeam etc. as sold to law enforcement agencies / governments etc. (read NSA) that can and do monitor EVERYTHING inc. GPS, calls, texts, take control your cameras and bug you, read all your email etc.


It is designed that even if you wipe your iPhone for re sale the software is still there - the only way to get rid of it is to actually sell your phone / destroy it and get a physically new one.


Another thought - some of the behaviours described in this thread would seem to be conditional (condition - records your IP address and only shows the pop up the first time you visit the site), mobile only browser injections that are the fault of the website being visited. Turn pop ups off and you won't be bothered by this type of issue.

Jun 25, 2014 1:06 PM in response to Bigapples

Maybe there aren't virus' for iPhones? I'm not sure about that, but there IS rogue software such as HackingTeam etc. as sold to law enforcement agencies / governments etc.


The software you're referring to can only be installed on an iPhone by jailbreaking it, and with physical access to the device. There is no known way to remotely install this software. Further, I've seen no indication at all that this software can survive a factory reset.

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How do i get rid of a iPhone Virus?

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