One word can break ANY iPhone and cause it to stop connecting to the internet

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Switching to a named WiFi network will break your iPhone until you reset all network settings (Image: APPLE • GETTY)

If you own an iPhone, you should be very careful about the name you give your home Wi-Fi network. That’s because a security researcher has discovered that a bizarre bug in iOS — the operating system that powers every iPhone model — can completely disable the smartphone’s ability to connect to Wi-Fi if the network has a certain name.

And when we say “completely turn off”, we really mean it. Using this name for your Wi-Fi network will restart your iPhone. When it turns back on, the Wi-Fi switch in the Settings menu will be turned to “off” and you won’t be able to turn it back on.

Not only are you limited to mobile internet, but because your Wi-Fi is turned off, you lose some useful iPhone features, including AirDrop and AirPlay.

Security researcher Carl Schou was the first to discover the peculiar glitch. The name you cannot use for your Wi-Fi network is: %p%s%s%s%s%n.

Schuo has not revealed how he discovered the baffling bug. However, Apple-focused blog 9To5Mac claims the string causes memory corruption – triggering a security procedure built into iOS to end the entire process. Unfortunately, while that puts an end to memory corruption, it also disables Wi-Fi for good.

Unless you’re living with the kind of prankster who thinks this is fun to do… it seems unlikely you’ll come across this very often. We’re sure Apple will work on a fix for this, but in the meantime, it’s worth swapping out Wi-Fi networks with % symbols in their names.

If you’ve already made the mistake, don’t worry, the bug doesn’t seem to damage your iPhone permanently. It is possible to reset wifi on your handset but you will need to reset all your network settings which means rejoining all your wifi networks (so you have to remember those all important passwords), change the mobile settings and VPN access settings. Go to Ga Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.

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Neela
Neela
I work as the Content Writer for Gaming Ideology. I play Quake like professionally. I love to write about games and have been writing about them for two years.

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