A friend of ours pointed out this scary-looking video of a supposed hacking attempt caught on camera. In the video, the owner of the phone said that her iPhone was getting hacked, with multiple inputs shown on the screen without her touching it, as well as the face ID getting changed without her consent.

The prevailing theory is that this was an ongoing hacking attempt brought about by connecting to a public WiFi connection.

While that sounds plausible, what’s happening here likely is a very well-documented case of the infamous “ghost touch” issue that has plagued iPhones. As the name suggests, ghost touch is when your phone seems to start getting inputs from thin air – your screen changes, apps get turned on, and in the case of the video, the owner’s face ID gets changed and the camera gets turned on.

“Ghost touch” usually is brought about by different things – but most of it relates to the touchscreen digitizer on the display. Hardware defects as well as improperly replaced screens (if the original screen broke) are the root cause of this, and the fix usually entails you taking your iPhone to an authorized repair shop for them to address the issue.

While it’s easy to blame this weird behavior on “hacking”, it’s not. The point of hacking your phone is to get information from you and to extract data from your device, and to do that hackers require you to keep using your phone as normal. Believe me, no hacker would ever announce his presence to you once they manage to get access to your phone, as most people tend to take drastic action to clear their files and sensitive data from their phone once they detect a hacking attempt.

Changing the FaceID also doesn’t serve any logical purpose, as the owner still had the phone in their possession during the “alleged” hacking attempt. What use will a new PIN be if they don’t even have your phone in their hands?

That being said, you should be wary of public WiFi hotspots. While these hotspots are usually secure thanks to the technology available today, public WiFi hotspots from smaller, mom-and-pop stores are more vulnerable to attack than the ones from bigger companies like shopping malls. As a general rule of thumb, you shouldn’t connect and access personal bank accounts or personal data when connecting to public WiFi hotspots, and you should be fine.