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It’s the same early-day digital scareware we’ve all seen before: “Your iPhone is infected with (310) viruses. Click here to remove them.” These pop-ups, seemingly always 280p quality and slapped together with stock graphics from a different reality, usually appear on shady websites as malicious ads or junk software, urging people to install a “fix” or be doomed. But one was recently spotted running as an ad on YouTube for a sketchy iPhone clean up app.
Renée Burton, VP of Threat Intelligence at Infoblox, took to LinkedIn last week to share a screenshot of the ad and express her surprise that it passed safety and security checks.
The ad itself isn’t a pop-up but uses an image of a TCC-like prompt to trick unsuspecting YouTube viewers into downloading an app claiming to fix problems that don’t exist. It states, “Your iphone is severely damaged by (247) virus! We have detected that your iPhone has been infected with viruses. If you don’t take any action, it will soon corrupt your SIM card, data, photos and contacts.”
It’s easy to dismiss this as a non-issue, but these scareware scams do still fool a lot of people. Cybercriminals disproportionately target older folks more than any other age group. And…you might want to sit down for this…older adults, particularly those aged 65 and above, are reportedly the fastest-growing age group on YouTube. YouTube watch time among adults 55+ has more than doubled and is growing 80% faster than watch time among adults overall, according to Think with Google.
Here are examples of real people learning that the app has nothing to do with removing viruses; further proof that these pop-ups still work today on some scale.
While these types of deceiving ads wouldn’t surprise me on platforms like X, seeing scareware on the most visited website in the world is genuinely concerning. And I haven’t even gotten to the app itself, which is another red flag. From a few minutes of research, I learned the clean up application is operated by a newly formed Chinese-based company with very weak and broad privacy policies, likely created using LLMs, and ranked 50th on Top Charts in Productivity.
As a reminder, users should always be warrying with what apps they share photo library, contacts, etc. with. Just because it’s approved and on the App Store doesn’t mean it’s safe. It’s impossible for Apple to know what developers are really doing with user data behind the scenes.