Watch Out: There's a Link Going Around That Will Crash Your iPhone or iPad

It'll wreak havoc on your other devices as well. 

Beware, there's a link going around Twitter and other social media that will crash your iPhone or iPad if you click on it. The web address is (unlinked here because it really is a gnarly little dude), and does not play well with iDevices

If you click on the link in Chrome or another desktop browser, you can get a glimpse at what the website does. Basically, it adds an infinite sequence of numbers to the website's URL in rapid succession—,, crashsafari/123 and so on—until the browser freaks out. On desktop, it's enough to make your browser freeze out (my Chrome got so messed up I couldn't even force close it without restarting the whole computer) but everything else should continue working fine. But on iPhones or iPads, it just crashes the whole device right away. 

Wired spoke to Mikko Hypponen, the chief research officer at security firm F-Secure, who has a theory about how this works. As he told Wired

"The problem is that it creates thousands of history entries. It takes longer to maintain the list than it takes new entries to come in. It becomes too much, and it tanks."

Fortunately the bug doesn't pose a real security risk; it can crash a phone but it can't give anyone access to your data or anything. Still, it can be annoying if you're not expecting it. So beware of any links to or to, a functionally identical site. Also be wary of any link that seems sketchy in context—it's possible to hide the destination completely if you use a link shortener like It's good advice in general.

Hopefully Google and Apple will be able to institute a fix soon, and in the meantime just be careful. Or be mischievous and start trying to trick your friends into clicking it. 

Source: Wired

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