Trolls are trying to fool people into bricking their iPhones

Kif Leswing

Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 11:47 AM

A newly discovered bug renders iPhones useless if the system date is set to January 1, 1970.

Why would anyone purposely set their phone to a date 45 years in the past? Well, one possibility is that they've been fooled by a troll.

(Imgur)

The above image was posted to notorious anonymous forum 4Chan on Thursday, and has been spotted on Facebook and Reddit.

Anyone changing their iPhone's date hoping for a delightful rainbow-colored Apple logo easter egg will soon discover their phone refuses to boot up. It can't be fixed except by an Apple Store, which will most likely simply offer a replacement.

The bug is related to a very old, well-documented issue with the Unix class of operating systems on which Apple's iOS is loosely based – it's similar to a Facebook glitch that prompted its users to celebrate "46 years of friendship" in December.

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