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Facebook bug turned on iPhone cameras without users' permission
Last updated on Nov 13, 2019, 04:12 pm
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Despite drawing flak (and a humongous fine) for poor grip on user data, Facebook is apparently not learning its lessons.
Just a few weeks after revealing that some 100 developers may have accessed the information of select users, the social network is in the middle of another debacle, wherein a bug in its system turned on users' phone cameras without their permission.
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Issue
Complaints of iPhone camera turning on
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Earlier this month, several Facebook users took to Twitter to report that the iOS app of the social network is accessing the camera of their iPhones in the background.
A number of complaints surfaced regarding the issue, with a majority of users saying that the camera turned on while they looked at the feed of their Facebook app.
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Details
How the camera enabled without permission?
![How the camera enabled without permission?]( "How the camera enabled without permission?")
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Going by reports, the glitch in question triggered - and activated the camera behind the app - when users watched videos or looked at photos.
In most of the cases, users said, watching a full-screen video and returning back shifted Facebook's layout to the right, with the space on the left running the camera.
Notably, CNET was even able to replicate the issue.
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Twitter Post
Here's the bug in action
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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 -
Fix
Facebook has now acknowledged the issue
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The earliest complaint of the camera issue came on November 2, and now, days later, Facebook has acknowledged the same.
Guy Rosen, Facebook's VP of Product Management, shared a series of tweets admitting the glitch.
He said that the bug was introduced when Facebook released version 246 of the app to fix another issue in the iOS app - incorrect launching in landscape mode.
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Data safety
No photos, videos taken or collected due to this issue
![No photos, videos taken or collected due to this issue]( "No photos, videos taken or collected due to this issue")
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Having said that, Rosen emphasized that the issue only triggered the camera in the background and did not collect or take any photos/videos.
"We have seen no evidence of photos or video being uploaded due to this bug," he tweeted while adding that a fix for the camera bug has been submitted to the Apple App Store and should be live soon.
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Twitter Post
Here is Rosen's full tweet
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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
