Is your phone running a bit “funny” then listen up, because just recently I helped out a friend who had an iPhone that was acting up, and we quickly found that it’s not just Android handsets that can be infected.
Hacking has been a problem for long from the computer era, but now it has advanced and can affect all smartphones too. To make matters worse, you don’t always know when your smartphone has been hacked either. You can perhaps mistake it for being “a bit old” or having “too many apps” and ignore it.
This last few days though I’ve found a friend with a VPN gateway setup on their iPhone that they never knew about. Their phone was also sending messages that they weren’t familiar with and they were receiving messages from people they weren’t familiar with.
So what should you look out for? Well, it’ll be one of these three things..
- Fast battery drain. This is one of the major indications that your phone is being hacked or has been hacked already. However, if you’re using GPS and perhaps streaming live video, quick battery drain may be expected. On a normal day though, when you’re just using it for checking mail and sending the odd message, you wouldn’t expect it to go flat all that quickly. So if the battery is running flat quickly, it’s a good and a clear indication that your phone either has a badly-behaved app or your phone could potentially have been hacked.
- Hot phone. This is another possible indication that you are getting hacked. The CPU is probably heavily in use and is generating the heat your feeling. Again, if this is something you expect because you’re running a WiFi hotspot, playing a high-end game, converting a file, zipping something or you’re using the camera and GPS heavily, it could be nothing. However, unusual and unexpected excess heat could be a sign that something is wrong on your phone and it does need addressing. To help stop this you can factory reset the phone after backing up all your important information.
- Phishing messages and pop-ups. We were seeing some strange pop-ups before we eventually managed to reset and wipe the iPhone in question. So if you’re seeing the same, and they’re not from adverts or expected app messages, it could be time to reset your phone. Don’t always immediately think that messages are a sign of a virus or a hack attempt though – you can get them when you are browsing through the internet and especially on social media such as facebook, but if it’s incessant and uncontrollable, you could have a problem.. The greatest mistake will be to open up the pop-up messages or open the link on the phishing message. It will automatically start transferring your personal data.
Hacking is a problem for many. If you feel like you are a victim from the above signs, click here to learn more about signs of hacking and what to do.