Pornographic Images popping up on iPhone

I'm not sure the source of the images (and it's more disconcerting that it shows up on sites like msn.com and twitter.com), but one thing you could try is to enable web content filtering on iOS 7.

Launch Settings, tap "General", scroll down and tap "Restrictions", enter your passcode, then scroll down and tap "Websites", then tap "Limit adult content".

In theory this will prevent the images from being loaded, but the mechanism that makes the images appear on those sites may still occur.

Other things you could try:

1. Enter Private Browsing mode if it's not enabled (or turn off Private Browsing mode if it's enabled) to see if that stops the images.

2. Tap "Clear Cookies and Data" (and possibly "Clear History") from Settings > Safari to see if that stops them.

Hope that helps.

I have seen similar issues, just not that particular case (involving pornographic imagery).

As for what makes me sure this isn't malware, that would be an understanding of the security technologies involved with iOS. The application sandboxing and restrictions against running code that wasn't downloaded from the App Store mean that there has yet to be any real malware for iOS (not counting jailbroken devices).

While I would never say it's impossible for there to be new, undiscovered malware out there, neither is it something likely enough to be worth considering when troubleshooting.

Bottom line is that a site visited previously on the phone has installed malware. Clearing the cache and cookies, etc will not get rid of it. You need to wipe the phone completely and rebuild from scratch i.e. don't restore from backup or iCloud.

There's no other way to get rid of it (yet). You then need to be very selective about the sites you visit on that phone.

Red, what is happening to you is not normal, it's not known as any sort of Apple issue with non-modified iOS.

I have a suspicion there's something is dodgy on the network.

Change your DNS to OpenDNS- http://www.opendns.com/ (it blocks the bad stuff)

What's weird, setlist checks out: http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/setlist.com

Can you post cropped/blacked out screenshots of the popup? If I can see it, there may be a way to identify the triggers.

What happens when you use Google Chrome instead of Safari?

When you say DNS address, what do you mean?

Or do you see something like this: 5.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa (Reverse DNS lookup)

In the photo, the numbers are IP addresses, is that what you see?

DNS is a function, so seeing DNS records/addresses is not normal.

It goes outside of safari... that's bizarre and very dodgy... screenshot it if you can next time.

Go for Chrome, let me know if there is any improvement or no chages.

In a nutshell, DNS turns the web address www.apple.com into an IP address like this- 17.178.96.59 so that computers can connect to it.

OpenDNS filters out lots of bad advertisements and urls/web addresses and other assorted unsavory things lurking on the net, that is why I recommend using it as a test to see what happens.

For using OpenDNS (tap the i or blue arrow on your wifi network name)

Tap to edit the IP address on the DNS setting (that's the only one you change)

Type it in exactly as you see it, 208.67.222.222

In my iOS Simulator test, Scrabble Word Finder redirects to Lexical...

The fling ad worked, (don't recommend scrolling)

But going to the two ad sites just gave blank pages.

I got my computer/iPhone to pretend they were British, the pages did not redirect from the Scrabble site.

Also, the history did show:

Tx again. You don´t have to do anything (exept going to this newssite once). After 5-15 seconds the AppStore App is opened (not the AppStore URL) and Safari is sent to the background. I have a film of this behavior where no input is needed at all to switch to the AppStore (I kept my hands away to avoid spurious inputs). I couldn´t reproduce this with a MacBook or PC, only with up-to date iDevices.

Meanwhile I found out that many others are affected as well, and that there are other places discussing the extremely annoying issue as well e.g.: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5556527?answerId=23771610022#23771610022

Well you have a much better understanding of iOS than me 🙂

I can only base my assumption on what I do know from my experience. I have worked in support and this is what I've found:

• Safari is being influenced by activity that doesn't come from the user.
• This activity continues even after clearing Safari's cache.
• This activity does not continue after you wipe the device.

If I were dealing with a Windows machine this would point to virus activity (rootkits aside).

I've seen this activity reported before at various other forums but it's never really come to prominence. Again, from my experience this strange activity only started happening immediately after visiting adult sites, which may explain why it's not reported as much. Perhaps it's not just adult sites - there's likely a variety of sites out there injecting something into the phone. Our phones are one of the most popular methods of browsing the net these days so it's in someones interest to develop targetted malware for them.

Red_Sqwiwul wrote:

Is this a virus? Is there anything that I can do to prevent it happening? Why is there no antivirus for the iphone / ipad?

Because there aren't any viruses on an 'i' device Red_Sqwiwul.

To answer your question, I never heard anyone mention that random images on a non-jailbroken phone have ever occured. But since Safari is a web browser, you can browse to nearly anything. As for Twitter, that would depend on the twitter application that you are using to access Twitter.

And Apple takes a pretty strict view on disallowing questionable material inside of applications. —e.g Safari has nothing of this nature that is built-in.

In addition to what has already been sugested, double click your home button, and when the active applications appear, remove all of them (swipe up in iOS7.) This will officially quit them and if you have a program that is running that you're not aware of it will be terminated this way. However, if your image is simply a web site that you're browsing too, then that is a separate issue.

-Alan

Bottom line is that a site visited previously on the phone has installed malware.

No, that is not the case. Unless the iPhone in question has been jailbroken (in which case, anything is possible and the phone really should be wiped clean), there's no known malware capable of infecting it. So this isn't malware, and wiping the phone would be unnecessary, and wouldn't solve the problem anyway.

I've never seen that sort of thing personally, but when you are browsing the web, stuff like that can very easily happen. Sounds like a pretty basic image pop-up. Normally, that sort of thing is generated by some component of that site (perhaps an advertisement) that has been hacked. However, you mention three different sites, and it's unlikely that all three have all been hacked in the same way, to display ***********.

Does this happen when browsing on any other device? Does it happen when your iPhone is on any other networks?

Also, are you positive that this image is displayed within Safari? It's not someone sending you an image through Messages as a joke, is it?

You're very sure of yourself considering you have never seen this problem 🙂

I have seen this problem. You can be browsing a legitimate site when suddenly, without any iteraction from the user, a new page loads over the top of your existing page (not in a new tab). Clearing the cache, etc doesn't help as this problem will continue to occur. The only known solution is to wipe the phone.

You said that there's "no known malware" on the iPhone - so does that rule out unknown malware? What makes you so sure?

Tapping "Clear History" and then Clear Cookies and Data" from Settings > Safari should address the issue.

You may also want to verify that the "Block Cookies" setting is set to "From third parties and advertisers". (Do not set it to "Always" or many web sites will stop working, especially when you try to log in.)

It sounds like the adult web site stored tracking information on your device (either as cookies or cached data), and then advertising networks read that tracking information and presented you with **** content via ads included in the page.

Enabling Private Browsing mode before going to adult web sites will cause the tracking data to be stored only temporarily, and then turning off Private Browsing mode will basically remove any tracking data stored while in that mode.

ddkilzer wrote:

Tapping "Clear History" and then Clear Cookies and Data" from Settings > Safari should address the issue.

You may also want to verify that the "Block Cookies" setting is set to "From third parties and advertisers". (Do not set it to "Always" or many web sites will stop working, especially when you try to log in.)

Clearing the cache and cookies doesn't resolve this issue. My cookie settings were configured as you've specified and it still happened.

ddkilzer wrote:

Enabling Private Browsing mode before going to adult web sites will cause the tracking data to be stored only temporarily, and then turning off Private Browsing mode will basically remove any tracking data stored while in that mode.

I also only ever use Private Browsing by default. This does not prevent the problem.