People Are Sending A Weird Text Message Which Crashes Your iPhone Instantly

A text message containing a single line of Arabic characters will crash iPhones near-instantly - and users around the world have been pranking one another using the code.

It’s not thought to pose a serious security risk, but causes the system to crash and the phone to reboot.

The bug is thought to happen due to ay a glitch in the way Apple's iOS software displays Arabic characters in ‘notifications’ - alerts delivered to show users that they have a new text message.

By defaullt, Apple adds an ellipsis (...) - and if this is placed in the middle of Arabic characters it causes the phone to crash.

The bug works in Apple’s iMessage application, and users have also reported that it works within messaging app Whatsapp.

Thankfully, there are several ways to make your phone ‘immune’ - the easiest of which is to switch message previews off.

Computer security expert Mikko Hyponnen says, ‘If your iPhone is getting bombarded with the new Unicode crash message, do this: Settings⇒Notifications⇒Messages⇒Show Previews⇒OFF.’

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In a statement, an Apple spokesman said: ‘We are aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of unicode characters and we will make a fix available in a software update’