Apple warns customers about iPhone effective power crash prank and reveals how to fix it

The company has given a clever fix to sort your phone out if your friends prank you with the notorious text

There's a text that you can send to your friends, that will crash their phone instantly, if it's sent from an iPhone to another iPhone.

It's been annoying people across the country, as people message each other the secret code.

The string of unique characters resets the phone, causing it to frustratingly turn on and off.

However, Apple today released a statement saying how to fix the phone if it is sent the malicious text.

The iPhone maker told the Press Association: "Apple is aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of unicode characters and we will make a fix available in a software update. Until the update is available, you can use these steps to re-open the Messages app."

Apple's advice on how to fix your crashed phone

  • Open Siri
  • Tell Siri to mark all Messages as read
  • Reply to the malicious message

Sending your friend the string of characters, however, does not just crash Messages.

It can also be used to affect the Snapchat and Twitter apps, if sent in private messages on either of the platforms.

However, an expert has told the Press Association that nothing more sinister than a simple reboot will happen if you are sent the message, and that they assume Apple will fix it soon.

Mark James, security specialist at anti-virus firm ESET said: "I am sure we have all had our desktop machines reboot after a seemingly random event has triggered the dreaded reboot. These mobile computers we call phones today have the same core instructions - if all else fails then reboot.

"This does not necessarily mean it's a security flaw or indeed an exploitable bug but Apple will none the less try and rectify this as soon as they possibly can."