Filed under With the ever-increasing number of mobile devices accessing the internet, cyber criminals have found a new market to attack with malware, spyware and other harmful viruses.
“Free iPhone downloads” is a term often used by cyber criminals to attract iPhone owners to download their malicious software, unknowing of the harm it can cause. Any iPhone user should be very wary of advertisements promising “free iPhone downloads” as more often than not they are not approved by Apple for use on the iPhone – and for good reason.
The Trojan Horse
One of the most famous myths in the world is the story of the Trojan War. The seemingly invincible city of Try looked like it was going to survive an extremely long battle with Greece. One day, there was monstrously large wooden horse sitting outside the city walls. A horse was thought to be a symbol of Troy and considered a sign of favour from the goddess, Athena. They took the massive wooden horse inside the walls to offer to the Goddess Athena in thanks. But inside the wooden horse were the best of Greece’s soldiers. When Try was sleeping, they came out of the belly of the Trojan horse and ransacked the city. This story is the reason discrete viruses are known as “Trojans” – they masquerade as free gifts, software or smiley faces and appear to be totally innocent. Often they contain malware, spyware or viruses and other nasties that capture your personal information, credit card details, keystrokes and private data and send it to cyber criminals.
Be Safety Conscious
Malware refers to a wide range of programs that negatively affect your computer or iPhone. They can do a variety of things to your iPhone, sometimes even infecting it so badly the only way to fix it is to erase all your personal data and restore it to its brand new settings.
The most obvious sign of an infected iPhone is that it begins to behave unpredictably or runs extremely slow. If that happens, you need to find virus-scanning software to run over your iPhone and detect any errors. Don’t just rely on the security program on your computer to find and fix any viruses. Often virus scanners can be out of date, even by a few days.
However, there are ways you can avoid running into security breaches on your iPhone. Avoid opening emails from unknown addresses, especially spam. Use only email address with spam filters and never open anything marked as spam unless you are entirely sure you know the sender. Virus scan all email attachments before opening, even if you know the sender as they may have a virus they are not aware of yet. You should also never click on links from popup advertisements that advertise free iPhone downloads as these are often a blatant trap.
These few tips can greatly minimise the risk of running into a virus on your iPhone. Keeping your virus scanner up to date and only browsing safe websites are the other main ways of ensuring your phone and your private data remains safe and secure and out of the reach of cyber criminals.
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