Fixed iPhone Safari Ransomware Popup

Customer brought in an iPhone that had a ransomware pop-up in the Safari browser. The pop-up did not allow him to exit but instead it just led him to a page that demanded he pay them money using Paypal.  He tried restarting his phone but to no avail.

The message looked something like this.

You are accused of viewing/storage and/or dissemination of banned pornography. You have violated World Declaration on non-proliferation of child pornography. you are accused of commiting the crime envisaged by Article 161 of the U.S of A criminal law. Article 161 of the USA criminal law provides for punishment of deprivation of liberty for terms from 5 to 11 years. Also you are suspected of violation of ‘Copyright and Related rights Law’ (downloading of pirated music, video, warez) and of use and/or dissemination of copyrighted content. Thus, you are suspected of violation of Article 148 of the USA criminal law. Article 148 of the USA criminal law provides for the punishment of deprivation of liberty for terms from 3 to 7 years or 150 to 550 basic amounts fine. It was from your mobile device, that unauthorized access had been stolen to information of State importance and to data closed for public internet access. Unauthorized access could have been arranged by yourself purposely on mercenary motives, or without your knowledge and consent, provided your mobile device could have been affected by malware. Consequently, you are suspected (?) until the investigation is held (?) of innocent infringement of Article 215 of the USA criminal law (‘Law on negligent and reckless disregard of computers, computer aids and mobile devices’) Article 215 of the USA criminal law provides for the punishment of deprivation of liberty from 5 to 8 years and/or up to 500.000$ fine. Are you sure you want to reload this page?”

Just follow the steps below to fix this issue.

Step 1:

Turn on Airplane Mode

Go to Settings > Airplane Mode and tap the slider.

You can also swipe up from the bottom of your Home Screen to open the Control Center, and tap the airplane icon.

When Airplane Mode is on, you’ll seein the status bar of your screen. In Airplane Mode, these wireless features are turned off:

Step 2:

Open up the Settings app and find Safari in the left-hand list, and then scroll down the right side until you find the “Clear History and Website Data” button.

You’ll be prompted to verify that you really want to do this

Step 3:

Turn off Airplane Mode

Go to Settings > Airplane Mode and tap the slider.

Now just open up your safari and you should be good to go.

Be sure to leave a comment below if this helped fix your problem. God Bless.

*Thanks for the help howtogeek.