iPhone owners, you might want to lay off Facebook for a while, because it looks like the app is actively using your smartphone camera while you’re browsing through your feed. It’s not telling you either, it’s just activating your camera without you knowing.
The issue came to light this week after a user named Joshua Maddux posted about the strange occurrence on Twitter. He shared footage of himself scrolling through his Facebook feed, and everything otherwise looks fine. Except, thanks to a bug in the app, when he half-swipes away the feed you can see his camera actively working in the background.
Since then, others like the guys over at TNW have been able to independently reproduce the issue. It looks something like this:
Maddux says he found the same issue occurring on five different iPhones running iOS 13.2.2, but couldn’t 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. Furthermore, the issue doesn’t seem to affect iPhones on iOS 13.1.3, and it only works if you’ve given Facebook access to your camera. If not, the app still tries to access it, but iOS blocks it.
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It’s still unclear if this is a bug or something Facebook planned, the company hasn’t commented on it yet. They’re also likely to say it’s a bug even if it isn’t. It is of course possible that’s the case, because the issue doesn’t seem to affect Android.
If it’s not though, it’s particularly disconcerting, given Facebook’s past record with privacy violations. It hasn’t seemed to be able to keep its hands off people’s data despite being called out for it so many times.
In the meantime, maybe either revoke camera access from the app or just stay away from it altogether for a while.
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