What is Malicious Text? What should I watch out for?
Be wary of simple random text messages that have unknown links attached in the body— especially from people you don’t know. According to some reports, “10 percent of all malicious emails sent today contain viruses, worms, ransomware, trojans, spyware, or adware.” While text messages tend to be safer than emails, you don’t want to completely let your guard down.Unique Cases of Malicious Text
Even if you don’t open any links, it’s still possible for your phone to glitch up in response to a text. Let’s see how this has happened in the past. In 2018, a bug with Apple devices was discovered where devices would shut down if they received texts containing the Indian language character “జ్ఞా.” Phones would continue to shut down and behave sporadically as long as the symbol remained in the chat history of the phone. At the time, there were even malicious individuals who took advantage of the bug and sent the symbol to as many people as possible. It was noted in the article that “back in 2015, a string of text was unearthed that could disable iMessage, while a year later, a five-second video was sent around by users to crash iPhones.” So, errors like this aren’t a one-time thing. It’s 2019 now and these specific bugs no longer exist, but these problems could still resurface in another form. In the case of similar events happening again, look for help from friends and search the internet on a computer to find answers, if possible. In most cases, a solution can be found.Tips on How to Protect Your iPhone From Malicious Text Messages & Hackers
- Don’t Jailbreak your iPhone—it makes it easier for hackers to breach your phone because you will lose several security layers, as well as any new security updates. In addition, Apple can’t help you with problems regarding a Jailbroken phone, so stay clear of it.
- IOS updates & Backing up your Data: When you see that you have an update on your phone, always download and install it. iPhone updates can include fixes that improve the security of the device and prevent malicious programs/scripts from being run.
- Don’t click that link: If you are feeling suspicious about a link, then don’t click on it! Be attentive to the context of the message containing the link to ensure that you aren’t clicking on something that will leave you with issues. Ignore all unknown text messages and immediately delete them. And if the suspicious message came from a contact, find them in-person and question them about the text.
