A Facebook Bug Has Secretly Been Turning Your iPhone Camera On
Another privacy issue.
iPhone users have discovered a hidden bug within Facebook‘s iOS app, which turns the iPhone’s camera on without permission. On November 2, Twitter user @neo_qa caught the bug on video, and later went viral with other users sharing their same experiences as well as video evidence of the issue.
The footage appears to show that the bug activates the camera once a user clicks into a photo or video in Facebook’s fullscreen mode within the iOS app. When trying to close the photo or video, the screen changes to the camera, also shown hidden behind Facebook’s interface.
Since the issue went viral, Facebook’s Guy Rosen, VP of Integrity has addressed the issue and said that the team is currently working on solving the issue in its next update. The technology giant also issued the following statement to Mashable:
“We recently discovered that version 244 of the Facebook iOS app would incorrectly launch in landscape mode. In fixing that issue last week in v246 (launched on November 8th) we inadvertently introduced a bug that caused the app to partially navigate to the camera screen adjacent to News Feed when users tapped on photos. We have seen no evidence of photos or videos being uploaded due to this bug. We’re submitting the fix for this to Apple today.”
Take a look at the videos below to see the bug, and stay tuned as any updates surface.
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
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
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. We have no evidence of photos/videos uploaded due to this.
— Guy Rosen (@guyro) November 12, 2019
