Is my iPhone being hacked, infected, or being controlled remotely?

Question

Level 1

2 points

Is my iPhone being hacked, infected, or being controlled remotely?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

First, I have an iPhone 4 that I have had for a couple of years now with operating system iOS 7.0.4. I have never jailbroken my phone. It is never in the possession of anyone else. No one else lives with me or uses my phone, except my girlfriend on occassion who has the exact same phone, but she has never experienced these problems I'm going to list here. On November 8th I started noticing that my phone was starting to act strangely.

First, it was starting to send text messages to people late at night (between 9PM and 4AM) in the morning. None of these text messages made sense. They randomly picked people from my contact list and sent group messages to people with stuff like "$-1", "(((7 vi", or it send links from web pages from somewhere like the Wall Street Journal. Some of the people included in the message weren't even people, just random gibberish that was typed in, like "vvyb-17@71". This only happened a couple nights as far as I can tell and hasn't happened since Nov 8th.

Second, my phone started browsing web pages randomly as well. It was going to my bookmarks or just random places in search engines. It would also put home button bookmarks of random pages on my home screen, usually just one a night if any at all. It does this every night.

Third, my phone starts flagging certain e-mails. It doesn't delete them, but it will flag them. It also drafts e-mails, but won't send them. It hasn't drafted any e-mails that were unsent since Nov 8th, but it will still flag them, randomly.

I have never plugged my phone into another computer other than the Mac mini I have at home. I have Wi-Fi turned on, but it is password protected with a firewall. There's no strange activity on my Mac mini that I can tell. My iPhone never used the iCloud before or when this started happening, so I don't think it's an iCloud issue. Currently I have an iCloud account because I needed one when I did a backup when doing the reformatting of my phone this Saturday when I called Apple support.

Saturday I called Apple support and I had my phone completely wiped off. There are no apps on the phone now and I changed all of my e-mail passwords as well as my Wi-Fi password. Last night, Sunday night, the strange activity started again with browsing random web pages on my phone and flagging e-mails. No texts were drafted or sent, but it's obvious to me that there are a few possibilities:

1.Somehow, someone or some thing is controllling my phone through the wireless connection at home. I don't know how this could happen, but it could be a weakness in my Wi-Fi/Internet setup at home

2.Apple's iOS has serious security issues that it is easy for someone to hack into and use my phone for goodness knows what.

3.My Mac Mini is infected and is controlling my phone through its internet connection. This seems ludicrous to me, but right now I will believe just about anything.

4.My Apple account is hacked and someone can control my phone that way?

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

Matthew

Posted on Nov 25, 2013 1:07 PM

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Answer 1

varjak paw

Level 10

170,200 points

Nov 25, 2013 1:56 PM in response to matthewstutz

None of what you suspect is likely. Far more likely is that your iPhone has developed a hardware fault, most likely in the touch screen, that's causing it to generate spurious random touches and as a result random app activity. The sort of symptoms you report have been reported here and in all cases where the iPhone was not jailbroken it's turned out to be a hardware fault. If you have restored to factory settings - that is, not using a backup - and the problem persists, I'd suggest you call Apple Support again, or make an appointment at an Apple Store if you have one near you, and let them know that the random activitity is happening despite a restore to factory settings. They'll probably replace your iPhone which will almost certainly cure the problem.

Regards.

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Answer 2

Nov 25, 2013 10:58 PM in response to matthewstutz

My iPhone was hacked before and it is possible well not like to happen but possible. Certain agencies have the ability to go in any device that can connect to internet. When using a IP address this allows numerous things that can happen. The second is my x hacked mines. She synced it to her computer and was spying on my info. Also emails if one takes the time to read exactly what they do with your info lol you would be amazed I mean shocked with what is going on google being the leader in selling information for adds corporations who want to know if you you like to watch sick things on internet or surf for red string. My phone was hacked and I never knew it until x linked her emails with mine and I received hers and so on. She also was able through google voice and pinger to collect not only call log but recorded voicemail and verbatim text through google voice all without me getting notification of it.

So to prevent anyone close to you having this ability

1 do not share pass with anyone

2 as annoying as it can be set two step verification

3. Do not allow anyone to use your computer Mac or PC if you use google of any kind.

You can clear data cashe and delete history and log out AMD log back In And I can pull it up

So it can be done.

Also if you use google check to see if anyone has synced

Your phone if so find the computer it's synced to and remove

4 hacking is a real thing. There are people out there

Who make tons of money from information

5 all or most emails sale info so give as little as possible when creating even if fabricating birth day or month or some thing that will prevent hackers from getting into info and using it

6 there are also hackers who troll or hack into things for pure fun and pleasure

Guard your personal info and loom for apps that have locks with in and use iCloud or clouds to store personal info or items that can be lost pics pass and such. If you do not have enough iCloud storage but a 500 gig hard drive and back phone up or devices or computers to it and store in safe

7 tear or shred all info with name info before disposing

I know your question was answered and individual is correct but when I saw the word hack I had to respond being that it has happens to me. Also post is old and issue may be resolved but those tips plus many more will or can prevent your phone or device from being hacked.

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Answer 3

varjak paw

Level 10

170,200 points

Nov 26, 2013 6:16 AM in response to A. M. 206

Your phone wasn't hacked. Your ex got access to your online accounts; it's those that were hacked, not the iPhone itself. That's a very important distinction, and one that is totally different from the symptoms Matthew reports.

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Answer 4

matthewstutz Author

Level 1

2 points

Nov 26, 2013 11:52 AM in response to matthewstutz

So now I'm trying to figure out under what circumstances this is happening and what the variables are. Thanks for both of your inputs, Varjak Paw and A.M. 206. I will post what I figure out when I can get some hard data on this virus / digitizer malfunction / malware / hacked iPhone issue. If this is happening to me, I know I'm not the only one.

Matthew

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