Ron Watkins said he had election fraud evidence. Instead he sent QAnon believers spam.
"I keep getting a virus alert on my phone!! Help!!"
"Did anyone else get a damn virus on their phone from this link? I’m so pissed."
"How do I get rid of this virus? Please help me."
These are just some of the disgruntled comments left by Telegram users after clicking a link posted on Tuesday by Ron Watkins, the former administrator of 8kun, the extremist imageboard where Q of QAnon fame dropped communiques to their followers.
Many reporters and researchers of the far-right QAnon conspiracy believe that Watkins is Q himself. So, why would Watkins share a virus with his subscribers?
What's going on here?
Earlier this week, Watkins had been teasing a big stunner of a revelation concerning the 2020 Presidential election. Watkins released his bombshell, which, even to his conspiracy theory- believing followers was pretty much a nothingburger.
Watkins' video shows public testimony from CEO John Poulos of Dominion Voting Systems, the company responsible for a significant of the voting technology used across the country for elections. Dominion has been falsely accused by multiple people of wrongdoing in the 2020 election.
Trump supporters like Watkins and MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell have been claiming for months to have evidence that the election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was fraudulent and that Trump actually won. However, their evidence has amounted to nothing but conspiracy theories and lies. There has been no evidence of fraud in the election and Joe Biden is officially the president of the United States.
Yet, regardless of this, believers of the right-wing QAnon conspiracy hold on to hope that sometime in the near future Biden will step down and Trump will somehow automatically ascend to the presidency once again.
In the clip used by Watkins, Poulos reiterates that the company, nor anyone else has remote access to the voting machines during an election. Interspersed by Watkins throughout the clip are blurry, unintelligible videos of computer screens allegedly from a Dominion whistleblower claiming they can access these machines remotely.
However, included at the bottom of Watkins' Telegram message containing the video was a since-removed link to a file uploading site containing the video, ostensibly so that his subscribers could easily download the .MP4 and share it elsewhere.
According to many of Watkins' Telegram subscribers, the link contained a virus which took over their smartphone with a slew of notifications. It's unclear exactly why Watkins chose that file uploading service. However, according to screenshots posted online, it's clear what's going on with these phones.
Where we spam 1, we spam all
Watkins shared a link to a website that installed iOS notification spam to his subscribers' iPhones.
iOS notification spam attacks are becoming an increasingly common problem. Usually, a user will click a link and then be bombarded with pop-up notifications asking them to tap a button to proceed to the page they're trying to access.
Tapping on the pop-up uploads a calendar created by the spammer to your iPhone. The calendar will then proceed to show the iPhone user a notification throughout regular intervals, typically on an hourly basis.
A common example of this type of calendar spam attempts to convince users that Apple is trying to warn them that there is a virus on their phone. Hence, why so many QAnon believers thought that Watkins' link gave their smartphones a virus.
The goal of the spammer is to get the user to click a payment link included in the notification so they can be tricked into purchasing an app or a subscription that claims will remove this nonexistent virus.
Q-Dropping the fix
While Mashable unfortunately can't help with the delusion that last year's presidential election will somehow be illegally overturned in favor of Trump, we can help with the iOS calendar notification spam.
Users with this problem, QAnon-related or otherwise, simply need to open the Calendar app on their iPhone and tap on the word "Calendars" in the middle of the menu on the bottom of the screen.
Find the spam calendar on the list and then tap the circled lowercase letter "i" colored in red.
Finally, scroll to the bottom of that screen and tap on delete.
In conclusion, QAnon believers: There is no virus on your phone. The spam notifications will be gone after following the above steps. And Donald Trump legitimately lost the 2020 Presidential election.
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