Facebook Admits Bug Allowed It Access to iPhone Cameras

Facebook has seen no dearth of privacy related scandals in the by yr or and then, and equally the decade nears its end, it looks like Facebook'southward issues aren't going away anytime soon. A new bug was recently reported by users of the company's eponymous app that looked like it gave the app admission to iPhone users' cameras while they were scrolling the feed.

Facebook has now confirmed that the problems does be on the iOS app, and it granted the app admission to iPhone cameras while users scrolled their news feed.

The bug was first reported by Twitter user Joshua Maddux who tweeted a screen recording showing his Facebook app opening the photographic camera in the background while he scrolled through the news feed on his iPhone. He further claims to take tested this out on 5 different iPhones running iOS 13.2.2, while adding that iPhones running iOS 12 didn't seem to display the camera open.

According to a Facebook spokesperson, the issues acquired the app to "navigate to the camera screen side by side to News Feed when users tapped on photos" — this does seem to be the case when looking at the screen recording shared by Joshua Maddux on Twitter as well. The spokesperson further added that the company is submitting a fix to Apple. "Nosotros have seen no testify of photos or videos existence uploaded due to this issues",the spokesperson added.

While this does seem to be an honest problems in the Facebook app, it doesn't help the company's reputation for not but violating its users' privacy, but volition probably add together fuel to the burn virtually rumours that the company actively spies on its users via their smartphones' microphone and camera. This is something Facebook has denied many times, merely its a notion that has stuck effectually, and the visitor'due south eerily accurate ad-targeting doesn't seem to help its case.

Meanwhile, if you lot're an iPhone user, y'all can head over to Settings, and plough off Camera admission for the Facebook app to mitigate this bug until the company rolls out a set.