If you’re a user of the BBC News iPhone app, you may have noticed a few weird messages pushed to you as breaking news notifications. “Push sucks! Pull blows!” Hackers, right? Nope, just some app testing gone wrong.
The message was sent on two separate time durations. First the message reads: “NYPD Twitter campaign ‘backfires’ after hashtag hijacked,” then strangely adds: “Push sucks! Pull blows!”
After a while it goes to: “BREAKING NEWS No nudity in latest episode of Game of Thrones!!! MORE BREAKING NEWS IIIIII like testing.”
Beneath the message the text read: “This is a breaking news story and the BBC News app will bring you updates as soon as they are available.”
(You have to admit, no nudity on Game of Thrones would be pretty big news. – Ed.)
It was first thought that the BBC News app had been hijacked by hackers, however the real reason for the odd notifications was a bit more sublime, developers were actually testing some new push notification features for the app, and the test message was sent publicly by mistake.
BBC News later sent a push notification, and also tweeted, that the notification was sent in error:
We apologise for previous two test push notifications which were sent in error to BBC News app subscribers
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) June 25, 2014
If you want to keep an eye out for any other entertaining notifications from the BBC, the BBC News app is available FREE in the iOS App Store. [DIRECT LINK]
