Safari Crash URL Shortener Adds To Browsing Havoc Among iPhone Users

If You're Using Safari Today, Here's Why It Likely Keeps On Crashing
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Sarafi users are facing double trouble today with the Apple software facing two threats that could crash the browser and even force reboot your iPhone.

It emerged yesterday that Twitter pranksters have been trolling people with a link that takes unassuming scrollers to CrashSafari.com, without ever letting them know that their iPhone, iPad (and any other smart device) is going to go down.

When you visit the website, it loads for a moment and then crashes Safari or forces a reboot of your iPhone, sending you back to the home screen with everything else intact. Depending on your settings, you might lose some tabs, but it won't do anything to damage your device otherwise.

According to 9to5 Mac the url works by overloading your browser with an endless list of numbers.

Separately today [Wednesday], Safari users around the globe have been reporting that the browser has been crashing on iPhones, iPads and Macs.

The problem - apparently linked to Apple's Search Suggestions feature - appears whenever someone tries to enter in a search term in the address bar.

Search Suggestions works by talking to massive servers at Apple. It appears as though a number of devices around the world are struggling to contact those servers and as a result the browser just crashes.

Users can fix the problem by going into settings and turning off Search Suggestions.

The Crashsafari.com site was created last year by 22-year-old Matthew Bryant, Wired reports

"In my spare time I often test how browsers will handle odd code that gets thrown at them,” Bryant told Wired. He added that he created it "purely as a joke."

Other similar sites causing the same level of havoc on phones and tablets includes crashchrome.com - a bug which has reportedly been around since 2014.

Despite the warning, several Twitter users have already fallen prey to crashsafari.com, with the link being clicked on more than one hundred thousand times

9to5 Mac explains that the site relies on JavaScript to create a loop with the History API - a pretty complicated way of saying that crashsafari.com is annoying but won't compromise your personal information. 9to5 Mac also said the glitch works on desktop versions of Safari, though not many people use that.

We also tried accessing crashsafari.com using the Chrome browser on the Samsung S6 Android phone. The phone didn't crash, but the website did freeze the app, making it impossible to go to a different URL. That said, we were able to minimise and close the app as normal.