How to Detect and Remove Spyware from Your iPhone

Part 1: Can Someone Spy on Your iPhone

It may sound like paranoid to ask Can iPhone be spied; however, the truth is anyone can be easily monitored or tracked. Spyware can be installed secretly when you click on promotional ads or visit phishing websites. Also, your loved ones can keep an eye on you if having your Apple ID and password.

Once there is spyware on your iPhone, it literally means everything with you is visible: who did you talk with on social apps, where did you go, which websites did you visit and so forth. Your treasured data, like photos, contacts and notes, is not private any more.

One thing you may also want to know is about the legality. Actually, this question cannot be easily answered by Yes or No. Over these years, spyware has been commercialized. The software manufactures have legal license to sell their products and the disclaimer will make they trouble free from customer's illegal actions. If it's the parent who wants to monitor their little child's iPhone, I am afraid this can be excused. However, when comes to steal someone's privacy, it is definitely against the law.

Part 2: How Spyware Works on iPhone

Currently, there are 3 types of iPhone spyware and each has a different way of working.

• Hidden Spy App
  
  This kind of spyware requires your device is jailbroken to install un-trusted app. Usually, apps for Apple device are downloaded and installed from App Store. However, malicious spying app can not be approved by iOS sandbox. After jailbreak, your iPhone will lose all the warranty, and hackers or amateurs will have a chance to install spyware on your device by inducing you to tap pop-up ads. Now with the reduction of jailbroken devices, this spyware is not commonly used.
• Masque Attack
  
  Spyware using masque attack is possible to be installed without jailbreaking your device. This is achieved by replacing existing apps with a modified version which contains malicious code to track and report your personal data. In order to bypass Apple's detection, it requires significant technical ability.
• iCloud Backup Attack
  
  Currently most of monitoring software, like mSpy, Spyzie or Flexispy, use iCloud backup to spy on someone's iPhone, as it can hardly be detected upon examination. As long as you have enabled iCloud services, and the attackers have your Apple ID and password, they can access your messages, contacts, browser history, photos, etc easily.

Part 3: How to Know if Someone is Spying on Your iPhone

As it's mentioned above, iPhone spyware can be difficult to detect and is usually invisible after installation, but there are still signs you can have a reason to doubt iPhone is being spied on.

• Higher Data Usage

  Spy app will use data to upload and sent personal information to the one who is monitoring you. If you notice data usage suddenly increases and the data icon is always active, watch out!

• Temperature Risesand Battery Drains

  Similarly, spyware will run in the background and consume battery all the time, but this sometimes may be confusing, as users reported after iOS 11 update, their devices got hot easily and battery also drained quickly.

• Strange Background Noise on Calls

  When you are making calls and always hear some strange buzzing noise, it may represent the conversation is being recorded by spyware.

• Cydia App

  If you didn't jailbreak your device, and the Cydia app has been installed automatically, there is great possibility that someone has jailbroken your device and installed monitoring app.

• Apple ID Login Request

  If you have enabled Two-factor authentication and received unknown Apple ID login request, someone might want use your Apple ID on spyware.

Note: You can use these symptoms to check iPhone for spyware, but these don't mean your iPhone is 100% spied on.

Part 4: How to Protect iPhone from Spyware

After learning how to spot spyware on iPhone, the top concern is how can I remove it from my devices. Blow are some suggestion you can take into consideration.

• Install Anti-spyware App

  There are some anti-spyware apps available to find monitor app on your device. You can download it from App Store and perform a full scan for your iPhone.

• Update to Newest iOS

  

• Restore iPhone to Factory Settings

  

Other suggestions also include:

>> Always have your iPhone password protected.
>> Don't give your iPhone someone you don't know.
>> Don't visit suspicious websites or tap strange ads.

Conclusion

There you have an overall idea about how to find spyware on an iPhone and how to remove it completely. Just for your information, you can have Tenorshare iCareFone to clean up all junk files and files to keep your iPhone at high performance.