[Electronics-talk] Do you use an antivirus with your iPhone?

Mon Oct 27 23:15:32 UTC 2014

Hello listers,

My iPhone is working fine again.

I just want to tell you what happened and about the mistakes I did, so that 
you don't have the trouble I had in case the same happens to you.

I asked the dealers on the phone and they told me that there were not many 
checks to do and that the phone was probably broken. According to them, my 
options were to pay about US$300 to get a similar phone or to make a new 
two-year contract to get a new one, because my current iPhone is not on 
guarantee.
I didn't like either option, because my iPhone is out of guarantee, but I 
still have 4 months to finish with the current contract; that means that I 
would have to pay like US$200 anyway.
USD300 for a similar phone or USD200 and a two-year contract to get a new 
one: that's ridiculous! And I was not even sure that my iPhone was really 
broken after all.
I told them that the new update might be causing the problem and that I 
would wait for the next update to be sure.

Well, in fact, I didn't have to wait so long.
In the meantime I did a recovery, but the computer I used didn't have my 
latest backup. The recovery didn't help.
I thought that the earphones might work and I tested them. They worked 
perfectly, so I started using Voiceover with earphones.
Then I started doing some research on the internet and I came across an 
article that said that some people had lost audio capabilities after they 
updated to IOS 8.02; problems with the speakers and with the mike.
I thought that that might be the problem in my case, but I had been able to 
use the speakers right after updating, so it was a little suspicious. In 
fact, that was not the problem in my case.
I started to give up, but, at last, I found an interesting article that told 
about the 10 things you should try when the speakers don't work.
I had tried 7 of them by that time, so, without hope, just in case, I tried 
the other three, without testing for each one.Those were:

1. Took the iPhone cover out, locate the speakers and be sure that there's 
no dust on them. I hadn't taken the cover out for a long time.

2. Move the switch on the left lateral face of the iPhone up and down.

3. Press down on the right lower corner of the iPhone for about 20 seconds 
(they say the connectors are there).

I did these three things and turn on my iPhone without any expectations, 
just in case, but the speakers started working and everything seemed to work 
fine, except for my email address (probably hacked) and for Siri that 
continued to dial phone numbers randomly every time I tried to use it.

Why my email address was hacked, I don't know even now, but the Siri problem 
seems to be a bug: it started to work correctly after i configured it again 
(It started dialing random numbers after I did a software reset).

I still find that Voiceover becomes slow to act, to read the screen and to 
speak sometimes when I listen to internet radio live broadcasts and this can 
be a bug in Safari or in the player; it never happened with IOS 6.
When it happens, I touch the screen many times, particularly on the top, and 
Voiceover comes back again.  When it doesn't come back after that, I ask 
Siri to load another page and the problem gets solved.

Also, I had a hard time to restore my iPhone from the backup I had in an old 
computer; it failed some times, and the computer became too slow each time, 
but finally I did it.  The backup that succeeded took about 4 hours. After 
the first restoration failed, I tried to restore again, but I always ran out 
of space. Here's the solution: wait until the next day: it seems that iTunes 
leaves a lot of temporary data on the hard disk, but it was deleted on the 
following day.
Don't use an old pc for backups.

Conclusion:
There's no virus in my iPhone, just a lot of bugs and issues that started 
after I updated to IOS 8. I wanted to downgrade but they don't allow it 
anymore now; they told me that the files for IOS 7 are not on the server 
anymore.

The other day, I upgraded to IOS 8.1 and I became unable to turn Voiceover 
off even by clicking the button in Voiceover in the settings. When I checked 
the triple click, I discovered that it had changed to default. When I reset 
it to Voiceover, I could turn Voiceover off again.
It seems that settings get corrupted somehow after the updates and that 
starts to cause unexpected problems.

If you are still with IOS 7.2, I would advise to stay on it for a while; 
there seem to have appeared some vulnerabilities on it lately, but you will 
avoid some unnecessary headaches.

I will have to update again to solve the Safari/iPlayer problem when the 
next version comes; I feel that I fell into an update trap.

By the way, I still like my iPhone.

HTH
George

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "George via Electronics-talk" <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances" 
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2014 8:27 AM
Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Do you use an antivirus with your iPhone?

> Thank you, Steve.
>
> This is a good point. I hadn't thought of that.
>
> George
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Steve Jacobson via Electronics-talk" <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
> To: "George via Electronics-talk" <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2014 10:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [Electronics-talk] Do you use an antivirus with your iPhone?
>
>
>> George,
>>
>> If you have a dealer near you, I think it would be worth bringing your 
>> phone in and have them run checks on it.
>> From your description of how you use your phone, it seems unlikely to me 
>> that you have a virus, especially given
>> that IOS 8 is so new.  In addition to IOS 8 bugs, it is possible that you 
>> have bad memory that is causing a
>> problem.  Especially if your phone is still on warranty, it would be good 
>> to make certain that there isn't a
>> memory or other hardware problem.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Steve Jacobson
>>
>> On Fri, 10 Oct 2014 11:32:41 +0900, George via Electronics-talk wrote:
>>
>>>Thank you, Ray, for the information.
>>
>>>  > George, based on your description, I'd say you have a corrupt install 
>>> of
>>>the latest IOS.
>>
>>>  Well, it worked perfectly ok after I installed the latest version, some
>>>days ago, but, suddenly, it became impossible to use Voiceover and siri
>>>anymore, yesterday.
>>>  My wife can use it, apparently without any problem; it's just that
>>>VoiceOver doesn't talk and Siri plays tricks.  That's why I think it 
>>>might
>>>have a virus.
>>
>>>  > To put your phone in to UDF mode, press and hold down both the power
>>>button and the home button for longer than ten seconds. Your phone will 
>>>then
>>>go in to a condition where the only option is to hard reset or cancel.
>>
>>>  I did that and the phone restarted automatically.
>>
>>>  > There is another way to do this.  First, turn Find my phone off on 
>>> your
>>>phone.  Then, completely shut it down.  Now, with one end of the cable
>>>plugged in to your computer, plug the other end in to your phone while
>>>pressing down the home button.
>>
>>
>>>  Well, I think I have no other choice than doing so.
>>>  I would like to avoid it if possible, but...
>>>  Do you think there's no other way around this?
>>
>>>  Thanks,
>>>  George
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Electronics-talk mailing list
>>>Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
>>>Electronics-talk:
>>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/steve.jacobson%40visi.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Electronics-talk mailing list
>> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
>> Electronics-talk:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/osocalmo%40yahoo.co.jp
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
> Electronics-talk:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/osocalmo%40yahoo.co.jp
> 