Random iPhone/Safari history question

"Ash78, voting early and often" (ash78) 09/10/2015 at 11:13 • Filed to: None

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I’ll give you 3 guesses where this is going, but you’ll only need one.

I have never visited a pr0n site directly on my iphone. That’s not my style, plus it’s a work phone that my wife sometimes borrows, so that would just be playing with fire on all fronts.

However, she stumbled across several old historical links to questionable adult sites (including Ashley Madison, LOL!) and we had a confrontation about the whole thing. Now let’s ignore that some people are cool with looking at/sharing pr0n with their spouses, that’s fine for them. But this is a case of my being pegged as guilty for something I didn’t even do. None of the sites rang a bell with me, so I have to assume they came up via random malware sites/popups or somehow in the background without my knowledge.

The most “malfeasance” I could even imagine is the occasional GIS that might return a mixed bag of NSFW results, but that’s about it.

Any IT semi-experts out there have any advice or recommendations in helping me mount a defense? So far, my pleas of innocence have been met with a lot of skepticism because, let’s face it, this sounds just like “sorry officer, it’s not mine, I was just holding it for a friend...”

deprecated account > Ash78, voting early and often 09/10/2015 at 11:15

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Have you cleared all your website data, history, and cookies?

Ash78, voting early and often > deprecated account 09/10/2015 at 11:17

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Occasionally I do that to keep the system uncluttered, but with nothing to hide, there was no reason to do it regularly.

Supreme Chancellor and Glorious Leader SaveTheIntegras > Ash78, voting early and often 09/10/2015 at 11:17

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clear your data, history, and cookies

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > Ash78, voting early and often 09/10/2015 at 11:24

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I have my phone set up on private browsing. I’ve noticed lots of links through facebook and some of my gaming apps will take you to unsavory websites.

Leadbull > Ash78, voting early and often 09/10/2015 at 11:45

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Throw the phone in a campfire.

Hermann > Ash78, voting early and often 09/10/2015 at 11:55

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Is the iCloud account yours only? Is this account also being used in a Mac?

Ash78, voting early and often > Hermann 09/10/2015 at 11:57

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Just mine...and cloud is disabled (because it’s always full...I backup to iTunes only). Good question, though.

Hermann > Ash78, voting early and often 09/10/2015 at 12:10

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Weird.

Even if you have the cloud disabled for storage, it can still sync some data between devices.

Ash78, voting early and often > Hermann 09/10/2015 at 12:12

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Come to think of it, there is an ipad on the same account, but it would be very unlikely to have visited those sites, either. Just my wife and me. I’ve never noticed any cross-pollenation of browser favorites or history before, but it might be possible...

deekster_caddy > Ash78, voting early and often 09/10/2015 at 12:49

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Historical links - as in scrolling way back in the ‘history’ tab? Many of these sites can be unintentionally opened from ads in ‘free’ apps (which are ad-supported). So it’s certainly possible that you tapped an ad inside an app and the site opened in a new Safari tab. You later closed up your ads and didn’t pay attention to the opened tabs, never wondering why Ashley Madison (an aggressive advertiser) had a window open in your Safari.

It’s one of the reasons I completely disable Safari through the parental controls in the ones I let my kids use.

Ash78, voting early and often > deekster_caddy 09/10/2015 at 13:26

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Yep — scrolling back for weeks or even months. Stuff I had never heard of. We don’t use a lot of apps on my phone, but I know for a fact a recent legitimate-looking real estate site I clicked opened about 5 successive redirected links to porn ads. It’s just everywhere.

deekster_caddy > Ash78, voting early and often 09/10/2015 at 14:04

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Yup. Advertisers are not always aware or ‘responsible’ for the ads that get to the end user. And ad servers can be hijacked, it happens quite frequently.