Endless loop website has rendered Safari useless

[Winwintoo]

iPad 4, iOS 7.0.3, Safari browser

I tapped on a link for what I thought was a joke website. It was one of those nasty endless loop sites. The whole Safari screen is greyed out - there is no way to get at the controls that should be available on the Safari screen. There is just the OK dialog that loops through endless nasty messages.

I've tried quitting Safari, but it opens to the same page. I've restarted the iPad, but after restart, Safari opens to the same page.

In iOS 6, there was a setting to close all open pages, but I can't find it in iOS 7.

I can't find a way to get past this nasty web page.

Please somebody, tell me what to do!

If you don't believe me I can send you the link, but, trust me, you don't want to know.

Thanks

 

[dougrogers]

When you say, 'quit' do,you mean closing the app? Or dragging out of the multitasking pane?

 

[Winwintoo]

When you say, 'quit' do,you mean closing the app? Or dragging out of the multitasking pane?

As far as I know or have been able to find out, there is only one way - closing or quitting - only one way to do it, drag it from the multitasking pane.

if you know another way, I'm all ears and I'll be forever in your debt.

 

[dougrogers]

:-( no other way I know of. Just wanted to clarify. Maybe there is something in settings?

 

[twerppoet]

Clear the app from RAM as before. Then go to Settings > Safari and Clear Cookies and Data. This should ensure that any open tabs are cleared the next time you open Safari.

As a consequence of doing this the sites that usually remember that you are logged in will forget; and you'll have to log into them again. Given your problem, I'm guessing you can live with that.

 

[Winwintoo]

Clear the app from RAM as before. Then go to Settings > Safari and Clear Cookies and Data. This should ensure that any open tabs are cleared the next time you open Safari.

As a consequence of doing this the sites that usually remember that you are logged in will forget; and you'll have to log into them again. Given your problem, I'm guessing you can live with that.

maybe I'm not being clear. For your suggestion to have any affect, I would have to be able to CLOSE any web pages that are currently open. This rogue web page has taken complete control of Safari. I can't close the tabs, I can't go to a new page, the whole screen is grey.

Clearing cookies and history have zero effect on pages that are already open. Safari always opens with these tabs open, see the image.

 

[Mickey330]

If you double click the Home button, that'll bring up the multitasker card switcher; like this:

Sweep up on the Safari "card" - this will fully close Safari and it'll no longer be running on the iPad. Then, you can do as twerp poet suggested and clear Safari's cookies and history in your Settings tab.

Marilyn

 

[twerppoet]

maybe I'm not being clear. For your suggestion to have any affect, I would have to be able to CLOSE any web pages that are currently open. This rogue web page has taken complete control of Safari. I can't close the tabs, I can't go to a new page, the whole screen is grey.

Clearing cookies and history have zero effect on pages that are already open. Safari always opens with these tabs open, see the image.

Did you test it by doing what I said?

This is what I did to test it, before I typed my instructions.

I opened a tab in Safari, then closed Safari. I cleared Safari from RAM by opening the multitask bar. I then opened Safari again to confirm that the tab did indeed reload.

I cleared Safari from RAM again. I then went to Safari > Settings and cleared Cookies and Data. The next time I opened Safari the tabs was close. Safari opened in a no-tabs-open state.

This is why I believed my suggestions would help.

If it is not working for you then we'll have to try something more drastic. What that drastic thing should be I don't know at this point; but since all controls in Safari itself are frozen it will have to be some combination of reseting Safari as I've described or reseting the entire iPad. Perhaps Reset All Settings, though it's probably too early to go that far.

 

[twerppoet]

I just repeated my test a few more times, with more tabs. It looks like clearing Safari from RAM should be unecessary. Clearing Cookies and Data is enough to close all tabs the next time Safari opens. At least it has been each time I tested it.

Of course, there is no telling if the website isn't somehow keeping this fix from working. It seems unlikely, but not beyond possibility.

 

[Winwintoo]

I'm afraid you are all missing the point.

Clearing Safari from RAM does NOT close any open tabs.

Perhaps you don't understand what is meant by "endless loop" - an endless loop is created in HTML and rather than rendering a page of information as you would expect to see, and you do see when you navigate to 99.9% of web pages.

Endless loop web pages serve no purpose except to display a small dialog box with nasty words and an OK button in it. When you program HTML to display any dialog box with only one button, you can't dismiss the dialog and the HTML that's running won't allow any access to controls in the browser. The creeps that program this stuff include an "endless loop" - an endless loop can't be exited - so when you tap on a link to one of these crappy sites, it takes over your browser and you can't get out of it by closing a window or a tab BECAUSE YOU CANT GET AT ANY MENUS OR BUTTONS!

So, I repeat, dismissing Safari from RAM does not close the tab that has this nasty page in it. So, again, clearing cookies does not fix anything in this case. If I COULD close the nasty tab, there would be no problem.

[Moderator edit: Removed link.]

 

[Mickey330]

I'm sorry that closing Safari, clearing it from RAM and then clearing out history and cookies does not fix your problem. And no, we don't think you're stupid - but I can't allow that link to remain. Cause someone will click on it and there they go...

After you've sorted your iPad (I'm going to assume you are restoring it), may I suggest you get with Apple to tell them about this. I am sure they will be very interested to know about a web site that cannot be cleared until/unless the iPad is restored.

Sorry for your troubles and sorry we couldn't help.

Marilyn

 

[Winwintoo]

I'm sorry that closing Safari, clearing it from RAM and then clearing out history and cookies does not fix your problem. And no, we don't think you're stupid - but I can't allow that link to remain. Cause someone will click on it and there they go...

After you've sorted your iPad (I'm going to assume you are restoring it), may I suggest you get with Apple to tell them about this. I am sure they will be very interested to know about a web site that cannot be cleared until/unless the iPad is restored.

Sorry for your troubles and sorry we couldn't help.

Marilyn

Thanks Marilyn. I was getting very frustrated until I realized that there are few of us octogenarians that remember the early days of the Internet when every 12 year old with access to a computer was able to program HTML either from scratch or by copying source code from existing pages. Those endless loop pages were all the rage and the creepy perpetrators thought they were so clever.

That link that you removed (thanks!) will also lock up a browser on a computer. The difference is that on a computer you have some extra hammers to beat it into submission.

On my Mac, I had to force quit Safari, but that still didn't get rid of it. The next step after force quit was to click on a link in an email. That produced an alert message warning that Safari had been force quit and did I want to kill and previously open pages.

On my iPad when I closed Safari and reopened it, the offending web page was still there and when I tapped a link in an email, Safari opened a link in a new tab. I could interact with tabs created by clicking on links in emails, but not tabs that were already open when the problem began.

On computers, this is "normal" behavior. It's always been that way. Browser developers just hoped that people would get tired of these sites, the kids would grow up and the situation would correct itself.

Clearly Apple has followed the same philosophy on the iPad, but they overlooked the fact that they don't provide a method for killing rogue pages.

As a matter of interest, I followed advice I received elsewhere and backed up my iPad to iTunes. Then I reset the iPad and restored from the backup. I was assured that this would correct the problem.

It didn't.

Now I'll spend the rest of the day starting from scratch.

I have a ticket set up at Apple. I'll call them and hope I get to talk to someone who knows what an endless loop is.

 

[babyrabbit]

I apologize for bumping an old thread. I have cancer and when I research my disease, I often run into websites that do as described here. A repeating dialog with an OK button appears, with a fishing message claiming a virus.

My solution is to force close Safari, turn on Airplane Mode, then reopen safari. The page can't reload its obnoxious content; allowing me to close the offending page. Then of course turn off Airplane Mode. This does not require clearing cookies as the above fix.

 

[twerppoet]

Thanks for the tip.

 

[sejmann]

I, too, am sorry for bumping an old "solved" thread -- I had the exact same issue on an iPad Air 2, running the latest 8.4 ios. And airplane mode and force quitting Safari didn't solve it. Every time I launched back into Safari, the same webpage tab was there, cached, even with no network, with the same infinite alert loop. Maddening.

The solution I eventually found involved using an iPhone on the same iCloud account. By going to the iPhone and listing the tabs in it's Safari, if you scroll down, you can see the tabs on other devices, and you can swipe to clear them. After several attempts, I was able to close the tab on the iPad from the iPhone.

Another thing I tried, but didn't fully explore, was putting Safari on the iPad into developer mode (via Safari settings) and connecting to it via USB from my mac desktop, inside Safari, under the Develop menu (which must first be turned on in Safari's preferences, under the Advanced tab). I have a feeling I could have altered the page to remove the alert, or close down the page. So, that's a possibility of the iCloud trick above doesn't work.