iPhone selfie prank forces people to accidentally send pictures to friends

There’s no way of taking the photos back once they’ve been despatched

David Cameron poses for a selfie as he tours Alnwick, north-east England (PETER MACDIARMID/AFP/Getty Images)

If you have an iPhone, head to iMessage. Hold down the little camera icon, slide your thumb up to the camera picture, and let go.

If it worked, sorry. If it didn’t, you would have accidentally sent a picture of yourself to whoever was lucky or unlucky to be on the other end of the iMessage.

The prank has been sweeping social media as unwitting people are tricked into seeing what is supposedly a clever new feature, but actually leads them to send accidental selfies.

Once the picture has been taken, there’s no way of getting away from it. While people can move their finger back down to cancel the photo if they’ve not take it off the screen, there’s no real way of stopping it from sending once they have.

The little camera tool is part of Apple’s recently-rolled out buttons for getting to the camera quickly, and so relies on having a recent version of iOS. They’ve also added a button to slide up to get to it from the home screen, so that you can take a picture without unlocking the phone.