SpyWare?

[Suspicious]

My sister and her young son are victims of domestic violence. The husband, in addition to his other issues, is a very capable hacker, and I am very concerned that he has been using spy apps on her iPhone and iPad to track her location and follow/record her call and message traffic. He is under a restraining order and she has just been moved to a secret refuge by the police. He apparently set fire to the family home in an irrational rage yesterday. - it appears to be a total loss.

Is there any way to check for the presence of spyware/tracking apps/whatever which would enable him to locate her and feed his paranoia by monitoring her calls and messages? I am fairly knowledgeable but don't know the Apple milieu so am pretty much useless here. I turned off the location services on the iPhone, which I assume should disable any GPS capabilities - true?

Anyway, this is a very bad situation with a terrified woman and five-year-old boy, and a mentally ill father with the capability to do much damage. Any help would be very much appreciated.

 

[scifan57]

If you want to ensure that there are no unauthorized apps or spyware on the iPhone, a restore to factory settings and setting up as a new iPhone would definitely remove any unauthorized content from your iPhone.

 

[willerz2]

Spyware, malware and viruses for iOS are extremely rare. They have to either exploits serious flaw on the iOS/device or combination of both and it has to be device specific. Unless the device was physically obtained and tampered with, there's no need to worry about spyware at a consumer level


Sent from my iPad via Tapatalk

 

[Suspicious]

Scifan57 - thanks very much for the information. Is there an easy way to detect if any breaking activity has taken place?

willerz2 - it is exactly this physical tampering which is suspected. The guy managed to blow away her gmail account, programs for a living when he is sane, and is a paranoid hacker who lived in the same residence for years before going nuts. Restraining order in place, but of course it is also illegal to torch the house and it didn't slow him down there.

Any more questions?