PS4 Messages Designed to Brick Your Console Reported By Users

Is it april 1st again so soon. Surely not. I hope its not true

@TomKongPhooey

I would not be surprised at all,so many nasty and petty people out there

I always get random messages from basic accounts that say "Hey" all the time. I keep deleting them because it's getting annoying.

Looks like it's time for me to change my message settings to insure nothing happens.

Besides, none of my friends ever message me anyways, so I never use the message section of the PS4.

thanks stopped messages

It's amazing how this gets discovered 5 years after the PS4's debut. I do wonder if this can also affect the PS3 or Vita.

I set mine to friends only a while back after getting a good deal of spam messages.

I was affected here in Puerto Rico my ps4 was brick i had to deleted everyting .Ilost my save data this sucks .

Wow thanks for the heads up. Must protect my precious PT demo!!!

I get weird messages from time to time, the last one was something about how I should give them a call...it sucks that this stuff exists.

Thanks for the heads up Push Square.

Well I fixed that right away. Dang though, that's some scary stuff.

Hopefully Sony patches this out soon.

Dang. Yeah, I’ma change it to friends only for now. Why people want to cause so much havoc when they can’t even see the result I don’t know.

thanks for the warning!

@Jaz007 because fools living in their mom's basement with nothing else to do on the internet and no personal development exist, sadly.

well sony is very serious when it comes to security so i expect this to be top priority for the internal/security investigation team.

I'll have to make sure I've got messages from strangers turned off as soon as I get home.

Yikes, that’s some scary stuff. I just don’t get why people would even do that to other people like that. Thanks for the heads up.

@ShogunRok Thanks! I didn't know this was possible, but I'm also glad I'm able to prevent all those spam messages on PSN at the same time!

I don't understand why there are still people who don't have their messages set to private. Why would you want to receive any messages from strangers?

One of the most ridiculous things ever lol

Thanks for the warning, I've changed my settings so that only friends can message me. This is a serious issue, hopefully Sony can create a fix for this very quickly.

Thank God I have no friends.

@Enuo Although it kind of sounds sad when you say it that way...

Doesn't take much to brick a PS4, it's already crawling through deep mud. Slow garbage UI.

Question...Even if you set your messages to private, wouldn't it still be possible to get the malicious message when someone sends a Friend Request? Like how it lets you add a message when sending one.

I didn't know u could change messaged to just friends, thanks for the info. I get these sleazy messages alot from "girls" wanting to send me nude pics, how do u block people? I tried to figure it out the other day but had no luck...

My phone is being weird, hope I'm not doing multiple posts, if so I'm sorry!

Sad that this kind of stuff still happens. I set my messaging to private a long time ago. I have found that spam messages have been much worse this gen in frequency. And when we set up an account for my wife, we got some awful messages, all because her id makes it obvious shes female. Luckily i saw before her and cleared them out and made her account private as that could easily driven her off playing the odd game or two.

I dont understand the mindset where people's sole existence appears to be to make people miserable. Why on earth would you want to brick someone's console?

Well i've recently been playing R6 Siege and the amount of random toxic messages i got on there made me switch my privacy settings pronto...

@shadyshadow i don't think that it would be a problem if you set the messages system to Nobody.

I've had my settings on 'friend's only' from the start, which should be the default setting for any system, whether it's PS4, XBox, Steam, or other. I don't know why they set the most vulnerable options as the default.

@Rob_230 Maybe it's the "masterrace" people, they like doing stuff like this.

Not an issue for me, but I let my son know. He's pretty solid at FPS games. And he "friends" without care.

It's those bloody Netrunners. I'm gonna have to go Solo on them.

@GigaGaia I have had my PS4 for 2 years and never even though about messages until I read this. Changed settings and then checked messages on the app to be sure and had 3 messages going back a while just saying “hey” from randoms so deleted them. As I didn’t get a lot of spam it wasn’t an issue for me.

Just saw this on a YouTube video by monkey flop and set my messages to off he said just setting to friends only will not work as it still leaves you open to get it set messages to no one

he also mentioned if you get this message while not on your PS4 you can use the ps app to delete with no issue

Anyway will keep checking here to wait on a real fix

@Red-Ranger report them, or leave report with ubisoft. They literally don't play any games with R6 anymore.

seriously, are people really so sad and pathetic that they get enjoyment from this?

they need to grow the **** up

wait is receiving the message enough to brick the system or do you have to open it?

I say report them through the app and pray Sony doesn't just brick their consoles, but permabans accounts and remove these cyber terrorists once and for all time!

That's awful.

Thanks for the warning push square all sorted its sad when people have nothing else better to do than spoil other people's gaming it's sad

@manu0 yeah you don't even have to open it

The only way to get it and be safe is if you are not on the PS4 at the time and you can use an iPad go into the PS4 app and delete the message with no cost but otherwise you need to shut down all messages till its patched

@Lumine from what I was told setting to friends does not help you have to set it to no messages at all

@Rogueleader76 I got one of those the other day along with a friend request and a phone number for me to call them! Weird

@Lumine @Katep me too, better safe than sorry, i also turned off Friend Requests just in case

If o get messages it's usually through my phone anyway as a text message no one ever sends me messages via the in system anyway unless if it was for old requests to play old PS3 online modes to games that's it

@Katep what? WTH

@Razza thats simple solution but will sony do anything well apart from say it isnt happening

@ShogunRok Any updates from Sony? That's awful... =/

This is bad. I regularly contact people who are not yet my friends. No need to be friends if they won't join your guild or help you otherwise.
Messages from people with 0 trophies are always suspect.

Thanks for the heads up, just set both my messages and friend requests to 'no-one' for the time being, just in case.

@get2sammyb
I'm assuming this also applies to community walls...?

@adf86 Thanks man!!! It worked !!

Will sending things like smileys that aren't available on PS4 through your PS3 also brick people's PS4's?

@Katep It depends, it can help as long as there aren't any trolls on your friend's list.

@TowaHerschel7 No, as far as I know this only happens with very specific text.

I got a message yesterday from an unknown and saw it on the app, but the PS4 was in rest mode at the time. Thankfully I then saw this in the news! I didn’t open the message but deleted it through the app but I was a bit nervy when I started it up today! Luckily the PS4 was fine and no sign of the message on it. Changed my settings now to be safe!

It's a good thing I work in the Goonies and so my PS4 has been offline all week.

Updated the article.