A string of text sent in a message Crashes Iphone

I work for a call center for a large cell phone company, our call centers are being hammered with this issue.

A less invasive workaround we've found is to have the victim send a picture message (started via Photos app) back to the original sender, which seems to restore the Messages app functionality, then *immediately* delete the entire conversation with the original sender.

I received the text message as well and it crashed my text messages I wasn't able to send out a text or even open up my text messages. It would just close me out of it. So this is what you need to do Go to your photo album and click on a photo and just start sending it to everyone through via text message that sent you that evil text message and it SHOULD WORK! Hope this helps. It worked for me and my friends

I contacted apple tech "support" about this via chat. They had no idea. disconnected three times. sad when google provides better tech support for Apple.

what worked for me was send a picture to the person who sent you the thing ! literally worked. i was about to cryyy cause texting is my life and it locked me out kept shutting my messages off.

My son and I were playing with this, well him mostly, and he's checked it across all the iphone platforms we have, 5 and up, all running iOS 8.3 and it turns off all of them EXCEPT mine. The only readily apparent difference between mine and the rest are the privacy tweaks I've had set since my iPhone 4, when I found out Apple was collecting location information and other data for potential advertising mining.

Could be a place to start looking for a kludge to neutralize this till a fix is done.

Just rad on another site that they have found that the text is presented to banners and it causes a fail in the operation that crashes the phone (turns it off) for most and causes a more frustrating problem if it also crashes messages.

THat hat would explain why it didn't effect my phone as I have banners turned off for messenger. It would also explain why others report no issues if the text appears while they are in the screen with the person sending it. No banner.

THat hat is what is being reported elsewhere. I have not replicated same so this is second hand info.

Settings -> Notifications -> Messages -> Show Previews -> OFF (gray switch, NOT green).

Alert style when unlocked set to "none"..

iIf what has been reported on Reddit is true and it is the text string being fed to banners that is crashing the phones, these are the settings I've had on my phone that kept it from effecting me when my son tested it on my phone.

Had to wait till my wife came home to check it on hers. It crashed when I sent the string. I changed her settings as I suggested above, banners to none and preview off, sent the malicious message again and her phone was fine.

So the work around till its fixed is to turn off banners and preview for messages.

If your messaging app crashes everytime you open it

1. Go To Your Photos

2. Click Any Photo

3. Send To The Person That Sent You/ You Sent The Link/Code To

Once The Photo Sends

4. Try To Open Your Messaging App Again

It Should Work. It Worked For Me

MacRumors has some solutions:

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/26/ios-bug-crashing-iphones-with-text-message/

There's an easier fix. See: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/26/ios-bug-crashing-iphones-with-text-message/

That will fix your phone after the fact.

The preventative work around is in my 11:07pm post above. Doing that will prevent an iPhone from crashing in the first place.

Correct. But I was responding to having to restore your phone from a backup. Which is clearly an after the fact solution, but overkill.

Yes, sorry, was just using a response to your post as a way of pointing up to the kludge if anyone missed it.

I've tried to get the word out but no one seems to have noticed here or in the other forums (Mac Rumor, etc). They just seem to want to talk about whose phones they've managed to muck up with this.

I must be getting old, because I don't get that? 🙂

My niece sent me this message to me as a joke (needless to say, I was not assumed). Fortunately I was texting someone at the time and so, although my phone powered down, my texting app is working just fine. I'm wondering if there is any possibility that something nefarious can be installed on my phone as a result of this text. I know that past incidences of SMS related bugs had installed a virus on any iPhone receiving that text.

http://www.techfragments.com/919/apple-iphone-virus-spreads-by-sms-messages/