Amidst the plethora of pricey gadgets and services susceptible to security breaches, it's a breath of fresh air to stumble upon a genuinely entertaining and seemingly harmless iPhone quirk.

Uncovered by security expert Konstantin on Mastodon (and corroborated by TechCrunch), typing the sequence “”:: (two quotation marks followed by two colons) into specific iPhone text fields can trigger a temporary freeze. TechCrunch confirmed that this phenomenon occurs when searching within the Settings app or browsing through the app library; I won't be putting this to the test personally and wouldn't advise others to do so either.

Notably, this glitch doesn't appear to pose a security risk – and it's unlikely to cause lasting damage to affected devices. Furthermore, it's easily avoidable, as the specific character sequence is more akin to something a young child (or a disoriented adult who's just woken up) might accidentally type into their phone.

We've reached out to Apple and will update this article if we receive a response.

https://computerstechnicians.com/tech/avoid-this-fatal-sequence-typing-these-four-characters-can-send-your-iphone-into-free-fall/