iphone hacked

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Level 1

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iphone hacked

I think both my wife and I have had our iphone's hacked. I have an iphone 6 plus and my wife is using a 6s.

Neither my wife nor I have had jailbroken phones. However, our phones are experiencing similar symptoms, and these symptoms began to surface around the same time our bank account was hacked by someone who used my wife's social security number and other personal data to access and take control of the account. These events have led me to believe that the source of the hack was from our phones.

One of the symptoms the phones are BOTH experiencing is that when we try to initiate a phone call, the phone line immediately hangs up and cuts out before you get a dial tone. If we restart our phones we can get the outgoing call feature to work again. The other symptom is that when we try to type the letter "I" in any form of communication, be it text or email, the word complete function changes the "I" into "A" with an icon of what looks like a vertical bar code adjacent right of the A. This is happening on BOTH of our phones. We also feel like our battery life is depleting faster then normal. We are feeling pretty creeped out and vulnerable. Any recommendations you have would be greatly appreciated. All the best, Adam

iPhone 6 Plus, iOS 11.0.3

Posted on Nov 15, 2017 8:10 PM

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Answer 1

x64uk

Level 4

1,524 points

Nov 15, 2017 10:53 PM in response to agtea

At least two of those are (I'm going to say) "known" issues (the definition of 'known' being the sticking point).

the odd character substitution - that is a truly known (acknowledged by Apple) bug. It was supposedly fixed in IOS11.1.1 (the most recent update at this time. That seems to fix it for most people - if it does not, disable Autocorrect until Apple issue another fix.

Battery drain - a massive, widely reported issue in IOS11. Apple have not acknowledged an issue, but it is inconceivable that there isn't one. IOS11.1 might being partial relief to battery drain. Many people report drain continuing to the newer versions (but fewer than before)

I can't relate to the dropped calls.

Back to the battery drain. My advice there....

Before doing anything else, under "Settings" / "Battery" review the top power consuming apps. It may reveal an app that you both use that does not play well with IOS11. This info would be lost by the later actions.
Disable "Background app refresh" (under "Settings" / "General") if you can do without it.
Update the phone to IOS to the latest IOS version it might help. The may be intensive processing required after the IOS 11 updates.
Leave the phone plugged into power as much as you can over the following couple of days.
After that, perform a 'hard reset) of the phone (Hold in side button and home button for a few seconds until the phone resets). This will not lose any information or settings.

I don't think the phone's been hacked - that does not happen. Not to unjailbroken iPhones.

However - observe basic security precautions - tis advise is not directly related to the phone incident but important to get you back onto a stable footing- Do not reuse passwords across multiple accounts. Do not use simple passwords, or passwords based on things people might know or be able fo find out about you. Be extremely wary of any email telling you of a security issue/locked account/virus etc. And one that most people do not think about... On mobile devices ensure that any email accounts set up use encryption when collecting email (I'm thinking about the email accounts that come with internet connections and use POP or IMAP to collect email - the setting will be called SSL or TLS and needs to be enabled on both the pop/IMAP connection and the outgoing SMTP connection for settings (If you can't get that to work talk to your ISP - if they don't support it, then don't use that account from a mobile device)

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