Critical Threat iPhone Warning

Critical Threat iPhone

Critical Threat on iPhone is a common scam tactic used to trick people into revealing sensitive data about themselves to the cybercriminals behind the scam. The Critical Threat iPhone message is designed to intimidate and panic the user, inhibiting their ability to think rationally.

The Critical Threat warning looks like a message from your system that warns you about the presence of one or (typically) more malicious pieces of software on your device. Almost always, there’s a button somewhere in the warning pop-up that supposedly gives you the option to clean the (non-existent) threats from your phone. The main goal of the fake warning message is to get you to click on that button, which can page-redirect you to a phishing page, a page that promotes rogue or malicious software, or directly initiate the downloading process of some unwanted or dangerous app. Interacting with this button is strongly discouraged!

Apple Critical Threat

Apple Critical Threat is a misleading, fake warning designed to intimidate the user and make them think there’s a dangerous piece of malware inside their iOS device. Typically, the Apple Critical warning is employed in phishing scams, banking theft scams, and malware-distribution campaigns.

The scammers behind the Apple Critical Threat warning rely on the panic and fear that the sudden pop-up message would induce within the user, stripping them of their ability to make rational decisions. If you ever see (or have already seen) this message show up on your screen, the best thing to do is to avoid tapping on it and, if possible, close the app that is causing it to appear – that app is most commonly the browser since such Apple/iOS Critical Threat warnings are most often embedded within rogue online pages.

The Critical Threat virus

The Critical Threat virus is an aggressive type of browser hijacker, that’s designed to spam one’s iPhone with the Critical Threat warning. The Critical Threat virus isn’t damaging but can trick you into providing online scammers with sensitive personal info or downloading other malware.

The Critical Threat virus/browser hijacker is usually not a very serious piece of malware that is intended to cause harm to your device. Instead, it is a way for the scammers to get the warning message to appear on your screen as often as possible, thus making you more susceptible to its false claims. In most cases, a free app developed by an unreliable manufacturer would carry this hijacker and once you install that app, the hijacker payload in it would get activated and would take over your browser, forcing it to spam you with the aforementioned warning. Furthermore, if you are seeing the warning even when the browser is closed, this means that the source of the warning message is in your iPhone and not in any of the web pages you are visiting.

Critical virus alert on iPhone

The Critical Virus alert on iPhone is a type of scam predominantly used for gathering sensitive info about potential victims and luring them into downloading rogue software. The Critical Virus alert shouldn’t be trusted or interacted with if you want to keep your iPhone safe.

Be sure that you DO NOT download anything that such warnings are trying to get you to download. It’s almost always more rogue software that would further clutter your iPhone with things you’d later need to get rid of. Ironically, this Critical Threat iPhone alert is oftentimes the gateway that real viruses use to infect iPhone users.

Is the Critical Threat iPhone warning real?

The Critical Threat iPhone warning is not a real system warning issued by your iOS and therefore should not be trusted. The Critical Threat iPhone warning is a fake message used by scammers for phishing, identity and/or money theft, malware distribution, and more. 

The Critical Threat iPhone should never be trusted – your iPhone has its ways of working out problems with potential malware attacks that never involve you having to download something or provide any personal details. Still, if you’re getting a strange warning on your iPhone and aren’t sure if it is legitimate or not, you can always ask us in the comments down below about it.

The Critical Threat pop-up

The Critical Threat pop-up is a misleading rogue pop-up issued by an unsafe site or by a piece of malware present on the user’s iPhone. Anything written in the Critical Threat pop-up is a lie intended to mislead and scam the user.

If you are seeing the Critical Threat pop-up on your screen all the time, the good news is that your device is most likely not infected by anything particularly problematic. At worst, there could be a browser hijacker installed on your device that you’d need to delete in order to stop the pop-up from showing up. The important thing is to not download anything offered to you by the pop-up or perform any other actions suggested by it.

SUMMARY:

Name	Critical Threat
Type	Browser Hijacker
Danger Level	Medium (nowhere near threats like Ransomware, but still a security risk)

Critical Threat iPhone Warning fix

The Critical Threat iPhone warning fix consists of these four steps:

1. Close the warning pop-ups while making sure not to interact with it.
2. Find and delete any app on your iPhone that may have introduced the Critical Threat virus/hijacker into the device’s system.
3. Clean Safari and any other browser you may have from rogue data and settings changed by the hijacker.
4. If the problem persists, an alternative Critical Threat iPhone warning fix we recommend is to use a specialized malware-deletion tool to clean your iPhone with.

Below, we’ve provided a more detailed explanation about each of those steps that we advise you to read before you attempt to remove the Critical Threat browser hijacker from your phone.

Step 1

First, you must make sure that the warning pop-up or any other unwanted pop-ups are gone from your screen. Even if a pop-up on your screen has a Close or an X button or any other type of button that seems like it’s supposed to close the pop-up, it’s not recommended interacting with it. It’s highly likely that the button would redirect you to an unsafe page, or it may even initiate a downloading process without your permission and get more malware onto your device.

To close the pop-up safely, we recommend double-tapping the Home button of your device to see all apps that are currently open, and then select the Close All button to close everything. In most cases, this should also close the pop-up. If this doesn’t work, then you should temporarily turn off your Wi-Fi and Mobile Data, and then restart the device.

In order to restart your device, press and hold down either one of the volume control buttons, and then also press and hold the power button. A few seconds, a Power Off slider should appear – drag it down, wait for the device to shut down, and then wait for a couple of seconds and hold down the power button until the device lights up again. 

When your iPhone restarts, the pop-ups should hopefully no longer be there, and you should be able to safely proceed with the next steps.

Step 2

As we said in the article, one of the likely reasons why you are seeing the Critical Threat warning message is the presence of a rogue browser hijacker component on your device. In most cases, such components are added to other apps that serve as carriers for the hijacker. For this reason, you must now take a look at what apps are on your device – you should be looking for newly-installed ones that don’t seem trustworthy. Note that most commonly, hijacker-carrying apps come from third-party sources and not from the official Apple App Store, so if you have recently downloaded any such third-party apps, you may need to reevaluate their trustworthiness.

If a given app on your device seems like it may be connected to the Critical Threat warnings you’ve been seeing lately, tap on its icon and hold down the tap until an X shows up on the icon. Select the X and the app will be uninstalled. If there is more than one apps that you are suspicious of, start deleting them one by one to figure out which of them is the culprit, so that you can safely reinstall the rest if you want to.

Step 3

Now you must clean your browser(s) from anything added to it by the hijacker. First, open the Settings app on your iOS device, find the icon of Safari, tap on it, find the Block Pop-ups and the Fraudulent Website Warning options, and make sure that they are both enabled.

After this, find and select the Clear History and Browsing Data option, select it, and confirm the action. This will clear any browsing history, cookies, and data caches that Safari has and will also log you out of any accounts that you may have been logged into, so keep that in mind.

Finally, do not forget to repeat this procedure for any other browsers that may be on your device – if, for example, you also have Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, make sure to clean their data too and to enable any security features that they may have in case those have been disabled.

Step 4

Deleting a hijacker and preventing the Critical Threat message from showing up again is typically not a difficult task, and if you’ve performed the previous three steps, you should no longer be facing this issue. However, if for some reason, the problem persists and the warning messages are being stubborn, it may be time to resort to the nuclear option – a Factory Reset. Don’t worry however, this is actually not complicated at all and if you do everything correctly, you should lose no data whatsoever.

First, you must check if the backup feature of your iPhone is enabled. For this, go to Settings, tap on your Apple ID that you’ll find at the top, and then find and select iCloud. Look at the list of apps and see which ones have automatic backing up enabled for them. If there’s an app with disabled automatic backing up and you don’t want to lose any data related to that app, make sure to enable the backup feature for it.

Next, go back to Settings, open General, scroll down, find and select the Reset option, and then select Reset All Content and Settings. On several occasions, you will be asked if you are sure you want to continue – always select Yes. Once the Factory Reset gets initiated, be patient and wait for the process to be completed. Once it’s done, the device will restart and, you’d have to set it up in the same way you did when you first purchased it.