Don’t try this at home!

Some have called it the iPhone’s Millennium Bug, a programming flaw so significant that it’s causing considerable problems for Apple users and the company itself. If you manually set the date to January 1, 1970, your device will become unusable.

This software design flaw is found in iOS versions 8 and 9 on all 64-bit processor devices, iPhone and iPad, and so far, no attempted reset has been successful; the only solution is replacement.

The question that arises is: why did someone try to set the date to January 1, 1970, in 2016? And, more importantly, why is the number of devices crashing increasing?

Simple, people have to try it to believe it. Skeptics think it’s impossible for a simple date to destroy an iPhone, so they try it. Don’t do it!

In addition to increasing the number of personal iPhones being blocked, thanks to pranksters spreading messages online that make people curious to try it or friends daring them to do it, there are also those who, to avoid risking their own device, are blocking demo units displayed in Apple Stores around the world.

But the problem could be more serious and profound.

While Apple developers are already working to fix the bug, there is talk of a potential catastrophe; someone could, in fact, infiltrate a Wi-Fi network, tampering with the website that all iOS devices access to automatically update the time and date. In this case, by setting the date to January 1, 1970, anyone connected to that network would receive an automatic update, ending up with an unusable iPhone upon the first device restart.

For users a bit more worried about this possibility, the solution is simple; just disable the automatic date and time update, connect only to secure networks, and make sure the date is correct before turning off the phone.