Recently, I received a few emails and comments around this issue. In this article, I will focus on describing the issue and suggest a very simple fix.
A typical scam message looks like the one below (error1015) with a call-in number asking you to dial. They will sometimes change the error code in the message to confuse you.
Scammers are trying to target people’s devices by displaying fake iOS crash messages and requesting people to contact a telephone number to seek help. Please note that that is a scam. The scammers are using javascript generated dialogs to show this message.
As a good practice, make sure to always have your Safari’s Fraudulent setting on. This can be changed by going to
Settings > Safari >“Fraudulent Website Warning”. Please make sure to keep it on.
The Setting on Safari to disable pop-ups, although a good practice will not be able to tackle this problem.
The above setting, although valuable in most cases does not seem to help with this scam.
In order to tackle this particular type of message/scam, Please follow the following simple Steps:
Step-> 1.
Switch you iOS device to Airplane Mode by going to Settings and then switching on the “Airplane Mode”.
Step-> 2.
Delete the browser data of Safari by going to
Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data
This step ensures that the browser cache is clean
Step -> 3.
Switch your iOS device back to regular connected mode by going to Settings > Airplane Mode off.
The most important element is to not call any of these telephone numbers that you see from the scammers on your screen and follow the above steps to get rid of this annoyance. You can always disable javascript on your browser but you may miss out experience from some legitimate sites by doing that.