Weird Messages Received from Non-Existent Numbers and More
I have been receiving messages from weird (and non-existent) numbers since 2nd of june, 2018. My phone is the iPhone 7 GSM model running ios 10.3.1. It is not jailbroken before anyone asks. And yes, I bought it from an apple store, it is a legitimate device/it is not a knock off.
The first weird message I got was from "19". It was a blank message:
I didn't think much of it back then. I googled if anyone received a blank number from 19 and surely, some people did! It was apparently a network cell broadcast from EE that keeps my device/SIM card updated. I am not a member of EE though, and I found this to be very strange...
In 6th of June, 2018, while I was using my phone; the apple two-factor auth notification popped up, saying someone from China was trying to access my account (I'm from Turkey and have never gone to China). The notification obviously had the "accept" and "deny" buttons. Before I could do anything my phone automatically tapped on accept and the 6 digit security number stayed on screen for a brief moment. Then it immediately closed (without me tapping on the "close" button.) My phone started acting erratic later. It started having ghost taps, swipes.. As if someone was trying to control my phone. I switched airplane mode on and all the symptoms stopped. I don't know why I haven't written this then. I was scared. I went ahead and changed my apple id password, my recovery e-mail's password, I tried changing SIM cards, I checked if any spendings were made with my card information, etc... I returned my iphone to factory settings with all the applications deleted. Reinstalled some applications back. The problem was gone for now...
Then I received another message from another number in 8th of July, 2018:
This time nothing else changed... No errors, no notifications. Noone tried to enter my apple id (though I was sleeping when this happened, so I couldn't see what exactly happened... To be sure, I checked if my account password was changed etc., and everything seemed fine... I was getting real scared this time. But the final blow happened today(22nd of July, 2018):
I received another message again while I was using my phone. And this time my phone automatically sent the exact same message back... The messages app opened by itself... Here is the message itself:
瀢႐!
Something wrong is going on.. Google translate translates the message to "Hey!". I put my phone into flight mode now, checked everything. I was also using a VPN at this point(not that a VPN protects phones from SMS messages(lol), It was just after my second factory reset.. I wanted to make sure my phone did not get "hacked" like before..) My phone is all good now, but I'm scared to turn off the flight mode.
What is causing these? Am I getting hacked? If changing sim and factory resetting did not work, then what else can I do about these? I have googled and have not found any answers for this... Please help. Quick if possible.
PS: I'm thinking of switching phones if this is going to keep happening.
Thank you for your time.
[Image Edited by Host to Remove Personal Information]
iPhone 7, iOS 10.3.1, non-jailbroken genuine device