Cell phones are a part of our lives right now, and to some people, our lives are our phones. Our phones are things that we don’t like to give away; after all, we keep lots of personal data on them: banking info, social media, job reports, contact information and location services. Few people realize how intensive an iPhone really is when it tries to collect data from you. Would anyone want a business to have total access to an iPhone?

Well, that is a real possibility of what can happen and what has happened. On August tenth, Ahmed Manor, a 46-year-old human rights activist from the United Arab Emirates, received a strange text message from an unrecognized iPhone. This link was not followed, but it lead to a sophisticated virus that exploited several different vulnerabilities, that in one go, jailbroke the iPhone, installed a virus and fully devoted total control of the iPhone to a business (Franceschi-Bicchierai).

Jailbreaking the iPhone is a way of installing custom non-apple approved software onto the iPhone. The jailbreaking process by itself is not illegal in the United States of America; however, there is illegal software that can be installed. One example is one that can bypass in-app purchases in the iTunes app store, such as in games where there is an in-app purchase, like Clash of Clans, Candy Crush, Clash Royale and Pokemon Go. The problem with people that jailbreak their devices is that Apple will quickly release a patch to close the loophole for the jailbreak. As of August 26th, iOS can not be downgraded to 9.3.3 or lower, which is where the current jailbreak is; however, the virus is capable of being installed on all devices running 9.3.4. Luckily Apple covered up all of the loopholes into the 9.3.5 update.

If you have not updated your device recently the best way to protect your device and personal information is to go into your Settings > General > Software Update > update.