You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

💡 Did you know?

⏺ If you can't accept iCloud Terms and Conditions... Learn more >

⏺ If you don't see your iCloud notes in the Notes app... Learn more >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Could I have gotten a virus from being redirected to a website that looks malicious?

So I was googling some info about a display, casually reading reviews and articles, then I clicked another one and suddenly got redirected to a page with a different name, displaying a 404 or 400 error (I can’t remeber which one), I looked up the site on a few databases and some said that it was malicious but said they didn’t find any particular threats, just for the sake of it I deleted all google chrome data in the app, and then deleted the app with its data from my phone, reinstalled it, rebooted my phone, and logged back in. What was strange though is that when I logged back into my google account and turned sync on and continued to use chrome for a few minutes, my phone “froze”, the screen got dark and a spinning wheel was there for like 2 or 3 seconds, then it wanted me to enter my password and then when I opened chrome it looked like if it crashed since all none of the tabs were left open. This isn’t the first time it has happened, however it’s the timing of when it happened that threw me off. I didn’t notice any other strange behaviour. Then later in the day, I was googling some car builds for a game, I clicked on the top link google gave me (it was one of those that are at the very top in the bigger rectangle displaying more info. I clicked it and was redirected do one site about some giveaway and then immediately to another one, being one of those “congratulations!!! You have won blah blah blah!!!” I noped out of there asap. I don’t think that there was any of those pop ups that look like from apple that you have to restart the app to make them go away, but I am kinda worried that when I tried to close the tab I could have clicked it without noticing it, but I don’t think that happened, cause I accindentaly clicked the link again and didn’t panic so much and just closed it not as quickly as the first time and still didn’t see any of those pop ups. However, just in case I am blind and dumb, if I didn’t get redirected to any other page it couldn’t have done anything or could it? I repeated the same process as with the first incident earlier that day, and this time my phone didn’t even freeze. Right now I am kinda scared that I got some virus because of those two incidents. I am kinda scared to use my ipad and macbook in case the infection would spread from my iphone to those devices. Could I have gotten a virus from visiting those sites? And could I spread it to my other devices? Is there a way to make sure that my iphone is clean? Also, could backing up photos then infect any new device that they would be dowloaded to? Or if I upload just the photos that I want to keep to dropbox or some other cloud, could I then infect any other device they would be dowloaded to? Sorry for the long post, I’m just really worried about my devices and don’t want them to be messed up.

iPhone 8 Plus

Posted on Oct 31, 2020 11:17 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 1, 2020 12:39 AM

iOS / iPadOS devices cannot be hacked or infected with Virus / Malware / Spyware by merely clicking on a link in Safari, if it is updated to latest iOS/iPadOS, unless you have intentionally downloaded spurious softwares or unauthorised apps directly from internet and installed on your device or/and have Jail Broken.


iOS / iPadOS devices cannot be hacked or infected with Virus / Malware / Spyware if it is updated to latest iOS/iPadOS, unless you have intentionally downloaded spurious softwares or unauthorized apps directly from the internet and installed on your device or/and have Jail Broken. 


It (Hacking) also depends on how careful are you in sharing sensitive and valuable information pertaining to your iPhone such as Passcode, Password etc with your friends and family members.


Be careful when sharing the device's sensitive and valuable information with friends and family members.


Thumb Rules:

  1. Enable  Guided Access before handing over an iPhone to kids
  2. Don't share Apple IDs
  3. Don't Jail Break
  4. Don't share sensitive information pertaining to your device and payment methods
  5. Beware of Phishing


Similar questions

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 1, 2020 12:39 AM in response to Dcnik

iOS / iPadOS devices cannot be hacked or infected with Virus / Malware / Spyware by merely clicking on a link in Safari, if it is updated to latest iOS/iPadOS, unless you have intentionally downloaded spurious softwares or unauthorised apps directly from internet and installed on your device or/and have Jail Broken.


iOS / iPadOS devices cannot be hacked or infected with Virus / Malware / Spyware if it is updated to latest iOS/iPadOS, unless you have intentionally downloaded spurious softwares or unauthorized apps directly from the internet and installed on your device or/and have Jail Broken. 


It (Hacking) also depends on how careful are you in sharing sensitive and valuable information pertaining to your iPhone such as Passcode, Password etc with your friends and family members.


Be careful when sharing the device's sensitive and valuable information with friends and family members.


Thumb Rules:

  1. Enable  Guided Access before handing over an iPhone to kids
  2. Don't share Apple IDs
  3. Don't Jail Break
  4. Don't share sensitive information pertaining to your device and payment methods
  5. Beware of Phishing


Could I have gotten a virus from being redirected to a website that looks malicious?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.