(12/11/2019) Facebook is secretly using your iPhone’s camera as you scroll your feed
iPhone owners, beware. It appears Facebook might be actively using your camera without your knowledge while you’re scrolling your feed. (...)
Maddux adds he found the same issue on five iPhone devices running iOS 13.2.2, but was unable to reproduce it on iOS 12. “I will note that iPhones running iOS 12 don’t show the camera (not to say that it’s not being used),” he said.
The findings are consistent with our own attempts. While iPhones running iOS 13.2.2 indeed show the camera actively working in the background, the issue doesn’t appear to affect iOS 13.1.3. We further noticed the issue only occurs if you have given the Facebook app access to your camera. If not, it appears the Facebook app tries to access it, but iOS blocks the attempt.
Update November 13, 7:20AM UTC: Facebook has confirmed the issue, calling it a bug (who would’ve guessed, right?).
“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,” Facebook VP of Integrity Guy Rosen tweeted. “We have no evidence of photos/videos uploaded due to this.”
Sources
- TheNextWeb: Facebook is secretly using your iPhone’s camera as you scroll your feed (12/11/2019)