Alright boys and girls, let’s get straight into who is spying on you this week. And surprise surprise, it’s Facebook. Yes, that’s right, there are now reports of iPhones that appear to be actively using your camera without you knowing, while you’re scrolling through your feed. It’s not even a case of them spying while the camera is open in app, but when you’re not even using the camera.
The issue was highlighted by Joshua Maddux on Twitter reported what was going on. This seems to be only occuring in the Facebook app for iOS. He shared some footage below which indicates how it works.
Found a @facebook #security & #privacy issue. When the app is open it actively uses the camera. I found a bug in the app that lets you see the camera open behind your feed. Note that I had the camera pointed at the carpet. pic.twitter.com/B8b9oE1nbl
— Joshua Maddux (@JoshuaMaddux) November 10, 2019
As you can see, the camera is actively working in the background as he is just on his feed. The problem seems to be from a bug that shows the camera feed in a tiny section on the left side of your screen, when you open a photo in app, and swipe down. Just for reference, I wasn’t able to do this on an OPPO Reno2 running on Android 9 Pie.
He goes on to say he found the same issue on five different iPhones running iOS 13.2.2, but couldn’t do it on iPhones 2ith iOS 12. So I guess that’s something?
Well that’s pretty much all we know. We don’t know if it’s a bug for iOS, or what sort of unscrupulous behaviour this could mean. But one thing is for certain, don’t trust any of your apps really. Alot of it, if not all are spying on you in some way or form (I think anyway), but this is a case of an invasion of privacy that I feel is a bit too perverse.
