Tweets, videos and Facebook posts have surfaced daring iPhone users to tell Siri, the phone's voice-activated assistant, the command "108." Different variations of the prank promise that Siri will tell a story or make the user laugh, but the end result is anything but funny.
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Across the world, different countries have varying equivalents of the United States' 911 system of calling local emergency services -- in certain parts of India, that phone number is 108.
Even in the United States, asking Siri to dial 108 will place a call to local emergency services, just as if the user had dialed 911.
As the Harris County Sheriff's Office noted in a recent Facebook post, an influx of calls to 911 can tie up the lines, preventing users with legitimate emergencies from reaching first responders.
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It is illegal in many states to place prank 911 calls; in Texas, violators could be charged with a class B misdemeanor.
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