Facebook’s camera app might be open without iOS users realising it

Recently, users have seemingly discovered a bug that affects the iOS version of Facebook‘s popular app (or is it FACEBOOK now?). While using the Facebook app, it appears that the camera app is inadvertently triggered when watching videos.

It aWhile watching a Facebook video, users have spotted the Facebook camera app running in the background—this can be seen when rotating the orientation of the video, as well as when you’re viewing a photo on the app, and you drag it down.

Joshua Maddux, who spotted that the camera app’s UI could be seen when moving a photo within the Facebook app, even goes on to say that the issue was replicated on 5 different iPhones:

Facebook, as you may have heard, has had its fair share of issues where it comes to privacy concerns, and it’s natural that some users have already begun to voice their doubts on the latest “bug”. However, we didn’t notice a similar issue on the iPhones in our office, prior to the latest update.

The company has acknowledged the bug, and says that it was down to an update that was pushed to iOS devices on the 8th of November. In addition to that, Facebook also told The Verge that there is “no evidence” of photos or videos being uploaded to Facebook as a result of the bug.

Facebook has rolled out a new update (version 247) that is now available on the App Store. We’ve tried to see if we could replicate the issue on the iPhones in our office, and it appears that the bug has been fixed with the update.

But that’s if you’re taking Facebook at its word, it must be said. The company has long been accused of unethical data and privacy practices, and many still believe that Facebook records and tracks everything that you do. You can read more about that here.

In any case, if you want to play it safe, you can simply revoke the Facebook app’s access to your camera. And if you want to upload photos to Facebook, simply use your phone’s native camera app, and manually upload the images to Facebook instead.

[ VIA ]

Related reading