As social media thrives and the internet continually makes our lives easier, we may be quietly putting our lives and security at risk. There are so many security features for our devices that you’d think it’s almost impossible for our data and personal information to be taken and used without our consent. However, this tech expert showed a video of how our phones are kinda not in our control, and frankly it’s a little terrifying.
Twitter user @JoshuaMaddux posted a video where he showed how the camera in his iPhone automatically switched on when he opened the Facebook app to view photos.
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
This issue currently affects almost all iPhone users as he tested it with five different iPhones, and they all experienced the same problems as it used the same 13.2.2. operation. So far, only iOS 12 doesn’t seem to have this problem.
Today, while watching a video on @facebook, I rotated to landscape and could see the Facebook/Instagram Story UI for a split second. When rotating back to portrait, the Story camera/UI opened entirely. A little worrying… pic.twitter.com/7lVHHGedGf
— Neo QA (@neo_qa) November 2, 2019
According to TheNextWeb, one way of curbing this problem is to revoke camera access, but however this does pose another problem as the software doesn’t run as smoothly as expected. Facebook did respond to this breach of privacy issue by saying that there was a “bug problem” that resulted from their latest update.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE!
“We recently discovered our iOS app incorrectly launched in landscape. In fixing that last week in v246 we inadvertently introduced a bug where the app partially navigates to the camera screen when a photo is tapped,”
Bug or not, this is extremely scary as once they’ve gotten a hold of our cameras, who knows what next? Whether you’re and Android or iPhone user, a breach like this is no joke!
Also read: At Least 50 Mil Facebook Accounts Breached Including M’sia, Here’s What You Should Know