Black dot via iMessage: Beware of the "Black Dot of Death

Recently, a supposedly harmless message has been circulating on iMessage. A black dot that causes your smartphone to hang and the app to crash. We'll tell you what's behind it.

Black dot forces iMessage to its knees

• If you get a message asking you to tap a black dot, you should think hard about not being able to resist your curiosity.
• As soon as you tap on the point, your iPhone hangs and is only fully functional again a short time after you quit the app.
• Sometimes just a restart will help to escape the black dot again.

Killer point: an iMessage virus or just a harmless joke?

• Even if many users suspect the worst, the point is just a harmless message that exploits a bug in iMessage and other messengers.
• This is not due to the black dot, however, but invisible characters in the message.
• There are thousands of invisible characters in the text, which are actually used to indicate the direction of the text.
• However, since these are not displayed, your cell phone cannot record which character you are tapping and hangs.
• With the next update of your messenger, this trick will soon become obsolete.