I bought a used iPhone 5c off eBay. It said it was activation locked, but when it arrived and I turned it on it was asking for the country and then wifi, like what I think the normal setup screen is (I've never had an iPhone before). The left side of the screen had vertical black bars of varying thickness and one thin red line, I could hardly use it, but I managed to connect it to my wifi. Then I realized the screen was loose, so I took it out completely and disconnected it, then tried with some difficulty to reconnect the screen and pop it back in, and then the screen was just blank, the backlight turns on but that's it. I didn't disconnect the battery when I messed with the screen, I hope that didn't damage anything. Out of boredom I randomly pressed the up & down buttons on the side of the phone, the power button on top and the home button. Suddenly when I held the power & home button at the same time it played a camera shutter sound, like it took a picture. Then it started talking and reading the words on the setup screen, all while the screen was blank.
I've heard of ways to make it look like an iPhone is locked when it isn't really so that it can record and take pictures, so I got a little paranoid and disconnected the battery and threw it in a cooler. I promptly contacted the seller and he quickly replied and said he'd refund me in full and I could keep the phone, no problems. Seems kind of suspicious to me.
My question is, if it was a PC I could reformat the hard drive and be confident there wasn't anything spying on me on it anymore. Is restoring via iTunes the same thing for an iPhone? How do I know for sure there isn't something on the phone that will interfere with the restoring process and keep it from removing any malicious app?
Also, is it necessary to run a virtual machine on my PC when I connect the phone to it to restore it?
I've heard of ways to make it look like an iPhone is locked when it isn't really so that it can record and take pictures, so I got a little paranoid and disconnected the battery and threw it in a cooler. I promptly contacted the seller and he quickly replied and said he'd refund me in full and I could keep the phone, no problems. Seems kind of suspicious to me.
My question is, if it was a PC I could reformat the hard drive and be confident there wasn't anything spying on me on it anymore. Is restoring via iTunes the same thing for an iPhone? How do I know for sure there isn't something on the phone that will interfere with the restoring process and keep it from removing any malicious app?
Also, is it necessary to run a virtual machine on my PC when I connect the phone to it to restore it?
