Don't fall for this Siri 'challenge' from your terrible Twitter friends

Please, everyone: don't ever, EVER just blindly follow directions from randos you follow on Twitter.

Certain groups on the social network (read: teens) have tweeted this month to encourage followers with iPhones to give Siri a simple numerical command, "108," and wait to see what happens next.

It's presented as yet another mindless Siri trick, but it's much more serious than that. Instead of just telling a stupid joke or, as one person claimed, unlocking a mini-Biebs show, Siri will initiate a call to the nearest Emergency Services. If you're not ready for it, you might not be able to cancel the call.

Here's what happens when you give Siri the "108" command. Thankfully, you have a five-second window to shut the "prank" down.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Smartphone AI assistants like Siri, Google Assistant and Samsung's upcoming Bixby can literally be lifesavers in emergency scenarios -- earlier this month, a four-year-old boy in England used Siri to call an ambulance when his mother stopped breathing. If you and your dumb friends are flooding the phone lines with fake distress calls, it might make it harder to respond to, you know, actual emergencies.

Police departments are responding to the Twitter challenge with tweets of their own to spread the news about what the command actually does.

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The command stems from India, according to USA Today, where 108 was used to dial emergency services before the country adopted 112 as the universal distress call, like 911 in the U.S.

There is a positive aspect to the trend: now we know another quick shortcut to call for aid if you're ever caught in a situation where you can't physically dial 911 yourself. That, and some very gullible Twitter users hopefully learned a lesson about just doing whatever they see online.