Is Facebook using your Camera without your knowledge?

It seems that Facebook at the middle of yet one more issue involving privacy.

Reportedly, multiple iPhone users have Stepped forward on social media protesting that the Facebook app secretly activates their smartphone’s camera within the background When they scroll through their Facebook feeds or watching the photos on the social network.

As shown within the Twitter videos below, once users click on a picture or video on the social media to full screen then return it back to normal, a problem with the Facebook app for iOS slightly shifts the app to the right.

It opens an area on the left from wherever users will see the iPhone’s camera activated within the background.

However, at this moment, it’s not clear if it’s simply a UI bug where Facebook app incorrectly however solely accesses the camera interface, or if it additionally records or uploads something, which, if proved right, would be the foremost unfortunate moment in Facebook’s history.

twitter.com

Joshua Maddux (JoshuaMaddux)
Found a @facebook #security & #privacy issue. once the app is open it actively uses the camera. I found a bug within the app that helps you to see the camera open behind your feed. Note that I had the camera pointed at the carpet. https://t.co/B8b9oE1nbl

7:47 AM - ten November 2019 2.9K 2.3K
The issue instantly got the eye of different Facebook users, several of them tried reproducing the problem however failing, that probably suggests the buggy software system update has not been unrolled to everybody worldwide and would possibly have an effect on a fraction of Facebook users solely.

Security teams was not really able to reproduce the bug and, thus, can't verify the legitimacy, extent and severity of the problem.

Joshua Maddux, one in all the users WHO discovered this bug, claimed that he tested and was able to replicate it on a minimum of five completely different iPhones running iOS 13.2.2, that is that the latest iOS version.

“I can note that iPhones running iOS twelve don’t show the camera however to not say that it’s not getting used,” Maddux aforesaid.

twitter.com

Daryl Lasafin (dzlasafin)
Facebook app on iOS 13.2.2 opens my phone’s rear camera after I open a profile photograph swipe all the way down to come (look at the small slit on the left of the video). is that this an app bug or an iOS bug?? @facebook @AppleSupport https://t.co/WlhSXZulqx

5:32 PM - ten November 2019
Some users additionally tested the problem when revoking camera permissions from Facebook, and that they found that the background area was simply a black screen in this case.

Since none of the robot users has nonetheless detected or complained a couple of similar flaw in Facebook, it looks like the bug solely affects some Facebook for iOS users.

The news came but a week Prior Facebook admitted that roughly a hundred app developers might need improperly accessed its users’ information in certain Facebook groups, as well as their names and profile photos.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for a lot of info, and if we do hear back from them, we’ll update this post.

Update - It’s a bug, Facebook confirmed!
A representative for the Facebook confirmed us that it’s is a bug, saying:

“We recently discovered that version 244 of the Facebook iOS app would incorrectly launch in landscape mode. In fixing that issue last week in v246 (launched on Nov 8th) we unknowingly introduced a bug that caused the app to partly navigate to the camera screen adjacent to News Feed once users tapped on photos. we've seen no proof of photos or videos being uploaded because of this bug. We’re submitting the fix for this to Apple now.”

“Triggering this bug activated the camera preview, and once triggered, the preview remained active till you tapped elsewhere within the app. At no Time was the preview content captured by the app or uploaded to our servers,” Guy Rosen, VP Integrity at Facebook aforesaid.

“We’ve confirmed that we didn’t transfer something to FB because of this bug which the camera didn’t capture anything since it had been in preview mode. We’ve submitted a repaired version to the App Store that is already rolling out.”

Brought to you by a proud member of