Image credit – MacRumors
Fake news has a been a big problem that many companies have been trying to tackle. Unfortunately it seems that a weird bug in Safari isn’t doing much to help curb the issue. The folks at MacRumors have recently discovered a bug within Safari that lets users create fake headlines that they can then send to friends.
We should note that this bug only changes the headlines in the link preview, and that when users click the link they will be taken to the website without any of the changes, but if you’re someone who only glances at the headlines, then this could be rather deceiving. It’s not hard to tell if it is fake by clicking on the link, but you should be careful if you’re suddenly receiving links from people not within your contacts.
That being said, this bug seems to be pretty easy to reproduce. All you’d have to do is launch Safari on your iOS device, make sure that you’re browsing in landscape mode, and surf to a website that contains a search box (such as Ubergizmo.com). Type the fake headline into the search box, select all of it, then click the Share button, and select Messages, and then the contact that you want to share it with.
Right now it only seems to work with Apple’s Messages so if you’re trying to prank your friends via alternative messengers like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, it doesn’t seem to work.