PS4 Users Are Sharing A Heaps Suss Message That’s Crashing Consoles

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Some colossal jerks have figured out how to crash PS4 consoles by sending a message with a particular string of characters, forcing those affected to perform factory resets, even after the message is deleted. The issue appears to be hitting PlayStation owners all around the world.

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Similar to the bung text messages that have messed up iOS devices over the years, the Sony variant can be sent by anyone wanting to fuck with the recipient. In other words, it’s the perfect tool for the pissed off 15-year-old you just smashed in Fortnite to get revenge.

Reddit user, Hunstark, posted a screenshot of what the message looks like via the company’s smartphone app, where it seems to have no effect. You can see it for yourself below.

Sony is usually pretty quick to remedy anything like this with a fix, but until that’s made available, there are a few ways to avoid the issue without needing to do a factory reset, which isn’t great for your saved data.

The first and least annoying option would be to download Sony’s smartphone app and use that to check any messages you received until a fix is implemented. As mentioned earlier, phones are not affected by the bung string of characters.

The second option is to restrict incoming messages to friends only, which assumes your friends aren’t complete assholes. You can do that via your web browser by going here, or on your PS4 by going to Settings, then Account Management, then Privacy Settings. In here, pick “Personal Info | Messages” and select Messages.

If you’ve already copped the shitty message, the third option involves booting your console in safe mode and rebuilding its database. It sounds complicated, but there’s not that much to it. You can find the steps right here, and no, this shouldn’t delete your saved data. This is what the process does according to Sony:

“Scans the drive and creates a new database of all content on the system. This operation may take a long time depending on the type and number of data items. This option is useful for cleaning up the data on your PS4 as it reorganises everything on the hard drive. Select this option if you are experiencing issues such as game freezes or frame rate drops.”

That should keep you safe until Sony sort it all out, folks. Beware the shitty message.


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