Eight characters are all it takes to crash Skype - and fixing the problem may require reinstalling the VoIP and messaging software.
Messages sent with the characters in Microsoft-owned Skype will crash the receiver's app. If you simply restart, it reloads the message, and crashes again.
The characters are "http://:" - suggesting it's a glitch resulting from a typo, rather than of malicious origin like the iPhone message, which crashed the handset if it received a specific text message.
Instead, the Skype flaw appears to be little more than an odd bug discovered by a Skype user, according to a report in VentureBeat.
The message appears to affect on Skype running in standard Windows, Android and iOS, according to the report, but not on Macs or the touch-based Metro app version.
The only way to get around the bug at the moment is ask the person who sent it to delete it, so it stops reloading from the cloud every time you restart Skype, or to uninstall the app and install an older version.
Skype told VentureBeat that it was aware of the problem and working to fix it.
