Click on this pageon Safari on your iPhone, iPad or Mac and it will crash your browser and might even make your device restart. Whoops, again!

Crash iPhone or Mac with this URL - or don't!

A new prank is going viral today on social media (the usual germcarriers) causing people's browsers crashing on their iOS devices. CrashSafari.com seems to be a harmless bug, except that visiting the URL is likely to crash your browser. Some users on Twitter are sharing this URL after using a URL shortener, successfully tricking people into visiting the website before they could see the name of the website.

Visiting the URL from Safari on your MacBook freezes the application, requiring you to restart your device to make Safari work again. The link overloads the browser with a self-generating text string which constantly populates the address bar. After some 20 seconds, your iPhone will reboot, Safari will crash on your MacBook possibly requiring a reboot too, and significantly heatsAndroid and other devices running Chrome.

crashsafari working on Android and PC

— Fake Jailbreak (@hatefakejb) January 25, 2016

So while the link seems to be targeting Safari users, it is also working on Chrome as far as slowing down the devices isconcerned. Clicked on the link to try it out or were you pranked by someone? Simply quit Chrome to fix the issue on Android, and reboot your iPhone or Mac to clear the problem.

For those wondering, how this prank works: the code of this site includes a small piece of JavaScript that calls HTML5 History API over a thousand of times, in a loop causing the Safari browser to freeze, or in the case of Chrome, it heats up or slows down the device.

The link has already been clicked over 100,000 times thanks to how users are pranking each other by shortening the links and using tempting text. The bug affects even the latest versions of iOS and OS X, so if you want to stay away from crashes or can't afford to lose the tabs and disrupt the flow of your work, don't click on these shortened links. Apple might include a fix in a future update, however, this doesn't warrant any immediate response from the company as it seems to be more of a prank than a security risk. An inconvenience, but it can be handled if we stop clicking on every link sent to us. Boo, you annoying friends!