Some users report sending some particular messages that send WhatsApp and the whole smartphone into lockdown: here’s what’s happening
A practice that has been going on for more than a year and to which WhatsApp can’t find a solution. What are we talking about? Of some messages that can be sent to users and that are able to send in lockdown both the application and the whole smartphone. As it often happens in these cases, the report came from WaBetaInfo, which published a message it received on Reddit.
The message is from a Brazilian user (but the phenomenon is not only present in South America, but all over the World, as shown by other testimonials also published by WaBetaInfo) who explains what is happening in the South American country in recent months. Some users send a very particular combination of characters that, as soon as they are received by the recipient, they block the application and, in the most serious cases, the entire smartphone. What is the reason for this blocking of the device? Most likely to the difficulty of the device to process such a large number of characters in a single message. And at the moment there are no simple solutions to unlock the device and make it work again.
WhatsApp, here’s the message that locks the smartphone
Testimonies of sending this kind of messages that lock the smartphone do not come only from Brazil, but also from neighboring countries like Austria and Germany. Some users speak of the presence of specific groups created on WhatsApp that have as their sole objective to forward to friends and relatives this series of messages in order to lock the device. An obnoxious and rather annoying practice.
The message that locks the device, in reality, is not just one. It is a group of contacts with a series of strange characters inside. We don’t report in the article what these characters are in order not to spread the message and create problems on the smartphones of thousands of users.
For smartphones this is not the first time of such a case. In past years, a very similar thing happened with iPhones, which would crash immediately after receiving a strange Indian character that the smartphone couldn’t render. Apple has always intervened with patches to make sure that the iPhone doesn’t freeze anymore, while WhatsApp still hasn’t found the solution to this problem.
How to solve the locked smartphone problem
If by chance you find yourself in such a situation, you should know that there is a situation to unlock your smartphone and WhatsApp. You have to open your WhatsApp profile via the desktop app or WhatsApp Web, enter inside the offending conversation and delete the received message. This way, it will also be deleted on the smartphone app and the device will go back to working. A word of advice: if you don’t want to be in danger anymore, block the contact who sent you the incriminating message, that way he won’t be able to bother you anymore.