Removing iPhone Virus?

[shamrin]

I have a customer who apparently has a virus on her iPhone. She got some kind of redirect from sorry.google.com suggesting that she had been doing too many clicks or some such. Has anyone seen this and have a suggestion about how to de-virus an iPhone? The Google isn't much help and I see there is an app from Trend Micro, but it doesn't seem to be an actual virus scanner.

 

[Rodrick]

Restore via iTunes. Don't jailbreak afterwards.

 

[Xander]

If she hasn't jailbroken, she probably isn't infected. If she did, restore it and should she choose to re-jailbreak, tell her she absolutely must change the default SSH password.

 

[shamrin]

Restore via iTunes. Don't jailbreak afterwards.

I really doubt she jailbroke it but I struggle to explain why she is getting the sorry.google.com message without some kind of malware.

If she restores from iTunes, does she lose her apps, contacts and everything or is it more like an XP repair install?

 

[silvano]

You should first check and see if any apps are auto-querying Google. Might not be a virus, but an inadvertent setting pissing google off and causing the redirect. http://community.contractwebdevelopment.com/sorry-google-com

 

[Xander]

Since most people wouldn't take full advantage of iOS' multitasking, the question is: Which app(s) is she running when this happens? Or, what site is she browsing on her phone?

Google prevents automated queries Sorry.google.com is the page Google serves you (or an application) when you fail to answer it's human-verification question. Google has instituted this new policy - randomly checking to see if queries submitted to it (ie. searches) are done by human beings (as opposed to software applications). The purpose of this is two-fold. On the one hand, blocking the search query and redirecting the user to sorry.google.com alerts the user to potential spyware on their PC; on the other hand, it prevents users from utilizing software to query the Google search engine.

Sounds like a poorly written app might be trying to access Google in the wrong way.

 

[Rodrick]

I really doubt she jailbroke it but I struggle to explain why she is getting the sorry.google.com message without some kind of malware.

If she restores from iTunes, does she lose her apps, contacts and everything or is it more like an XP repair install?

It's up to you, after restore you can set up as a new phone or restore backup that iTunes makes for you. Occasionally the backup has problems that only a "new phone" restore fixes. That's a last resort though. 99% of the time if you restore from backup it'll fix most problems.

As to a non-jailbroken phone having malware it's possible but highly unlikely.