Careful What You Click: "Crash Safari" Webpage Will Do Just That

In May 2015, word surfaced that a specific text message could cause an iPhone to crash, leading no doubt to endless annoying pranks between friends. Now there's something similar floating around, and it comes in the form of a link — visit the URL with Safari, and it will eventually make the browser crash. It works on Macs and mobile devices.

That website is "CrashSafari.co," and it results in a text string filling the address bar. It will continue to do this as the website is seemingly loading, only by the time the victim realizes their browser is slowing down it will be too late to back away. The browser will eventually lock up and then crash.

The URL is most effective on mobile devices, as it doesn't take long for them to crash. On computers, it takes a while, and so people are likely to close the tab before it can do anything. Will it hurt your device? No. Is it incredibly annoying? Absolutely, and you might lose whatever you're working on if you're forced to reboot.

Of course, some pranksters are already sending the link around, hiding it behind a tiny URL or something similar, tricking unsuspecting users into clicking. When testing it on Chrome, a similar issue eventually surfaces, though it seems to take longer.