Safari browser bug could cost iPhone users heavily

Richard Goodwin

A bug in the Safari browser for iPhone could potentially cause users to unwittingly run up huge monthly data bills, claimed an article on cultofmac.

The bug, which was originally reported by an Estonian website, is apparently related to Safari’s failure to close connections with web servers that run Motion JPEG to stream videos over the Internet.

Allegedly, after viewing one of these websites and reverting back to the iPhone’s home screen, Safari continues to stream the content over the iPhone’s 3G or EDGE connection from the said site’s Motion JPEG-running server.

The Estonian report claimed that the Safari "bug" enabled them to run up over 740MB data in just over an hour. And the only way to prevent this from happening is to browse to another site, which servers the link, before closing Safari.

In addition, the report claimed that only users on "limited" data plans would be affected by the bug, which means the majority of iPhone users should not have an issue.

Apple was unavailable for comment when contacted by Smartphone Tracker.