How to remove a Virus from an iPhone or iPad

Despite contrary believes, iOS malwares exist, but they are rare. I’ll cover now how to check an iPhone or iPad for viruses and worms and remove them if you find any because If you think there's a virus on your iPhone, chances are that you might be right, but it could also be a misbehaving app - which might be trying to convince you that iOS is infected with the purpose of redirecting you to a URL or page on the App Store or outside of it for a 'fix'.

We have a lot to cover so let’s dive into it beginning with finding out if your iPhone got a virus

Technically speaking, a virus is some code a guy wrote that will try to fusion or merge with some program that has also been written with code. The iOS and iPadOS has a lot of attacks that match this definition by hijacking the original developer’s intent. And although compromised apps should be caught at the App Store's approval stage, those who have jailbroken their devices are able to download apps from non-official sources, which may mean they've inadvertently installed something dangerous. Of course if you have not jailbroken your phone that’s a different story but for those who did, they have basically opened up their phone to any hackers.

In any case, the iOS structure (called sandbox) should prevent the malware attack from getting access to other applications. So, what’s causing the problem? Let’s go through steps, you answer them and if any match, that’s a red flag:

· Have you jailbroken your device? And if so, have you installed an application from a non-official source whose authenticity is questionable? If the answer to both is yes, you may have a malicious piece of software on your device, and you should attempt to reverse whatever you installed by uninstalling it.

· Does the unexpected behavior manifest itself when you use certain apps only? If so, then you're probably looking at an app-specific issue. Common behaviors exhibited by apps that have been hijacked include redirecting you web page that you didn’t intend to visit in Safari, and opening the App Store without permission.

· I don’t recommend using Anti-viruses since they are all full of spamware and have no privacy at all, so stay way of these unless your phone is on a critical Hijiking position and you want to restore your files, but once you save your documents, a full wipe of the phone is more beneficial than an antivirus.

· It could also be that if the problem continues to happen no matter what which apps are open, there are big chances that your device is misbehaving because of a hardware problem, or because of an iOS change that you're not used to yet, or because you or another user of the device has changed a setting. In any of these cases I would recommend to take the device to an Apple Genius Bar.

Now how do you know if it’s an app causing the problem?

Rather than a virus affecting iOS itself, it's possible that you've simply got an app problem. This doesn’t mean the app, or the developers are bad, but for the time being you can update it and if it doesn’t solve the problem, uninstall it and see if it’s solved. Then research the app to see if anyone has gotten a similar issue.

If the devs are contactable then you should report the issue to them. They may be able to offer a solution right away, but even if they can't, they are more likely to find a fix if they know about it.

Here are also some things you can try:

If you have been using your browser, try clearing the history and website data, I’ll cover safari but it’s the same in all browser such as Chrome or Firefox:

Go to Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data, then tap Clear History and Data to confirm.

Also go to the button, click Advance, click on Website Data and click on "Remove All Website Data"

You can also try to power off and restart your phone, we usually take for granted this option and even in this modern world, a restart is always good and sometimes necessary for your devices, so:

Hold the power button and the volume down button at the same time to power off and when it’s completely turned off, turn it on back up.

If none of these has fixed it, you may need some drastic measures. Some things to try:

1- Restore your phone from a backup (I trust that you backed up your phone when it was working fine)

2- Ultimately the best solution if nothing works is to clean wipe your phone and when you set it up at the beginning do not check the option to download from cloud and rather set it up as a new phone, that way we can mitigate some possibilities of the virus being in the cloud. Wipe your iPhone by going to Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Contents and Settings, then enter your passcode and confirm the process. Wait for the erasure to complete, and then set up the iPhone as a new device.

If you want to protect your phone from future Viruses, I recommend not going to Porn sites, installing profiles to use some apps, going to sketchy websites or Jailbreaking the phone. If you are going to do any of this don’t use your personal phone.