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Apple security message re virus & vpn

M

MiniGeek

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 10, 2016
106
6
Hello,

I just had a message come to my iphone via the Safari app, and it said my phone may have been infected with a virus and I should install a vpn. The Safari app was opened when I woke my phone up out of sleep mode and that is what was there. There were 2 buttons to install or cancel. I closed the browser page instead. I tried to see the address of the website before I did that, and it just showed up as a bunch of gibberish. I deleted all browsing history and data, so I don't know now exactly what was there or how that happened. The last page I had had open was the yellowpages.ca page and I just went there again to see if I could reproduce the issue. It didn't happen again.
Have any of you seen anything like this? Of course I don't think I am infected with anything, it's a popup scam to perhaps try to get me to install something malicious. I am just curious as to whether or not anyone else has seen anything of this nature. I have an iPhone 8, iOS 11.2.1 (I had heard there may be issues with iOS 11.2.6, so I am waiting until the next update.)
 
Oh, this is funny. I went back to the yellowpages.ca website, and I just got a popup that as an Amazon.com user, I have a chance to win a $1000 gift card or an iphone or a Samsung galaxy phone. I do have the popup blocker on. Obviously the yellowpages.ca page has some bad actors there.
 
MiniGeek said:
Oh, this is funny. I went back to the yellowpages.ca website, and I just got a popup that as an Amazon.com user, I have a chance to win a $1000 gift card or an iphone or a Samsung galaxy phone. I do have the popup blocker on. Obviously the yellowpages.ca page has some bad actors there.
Click to expand...
Yes, I've run into lots of problems with yellow pages before. I would recommend AdGuard (Pro or Free) for a content blocker as these kinds of pop-ups are becoming quite frequent and the built in pop up blocker for Safari (both iOS and Mac) are worthless.
 
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I seem to remember there is a bug in iOS 11.2.1 where Safari does not always fully clear website data. This could explain why you saw the ad.

This bug has since been fixed in newer releases.
 
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