iPhone users, beware! It appears that Facebook might be secretly spying on you via your phone camera without your knowledge while you scroll through your news feed. When you're scrolling through the Facebook app on your iPhone, the social network could be accessing your device's camera, as some concerned users have pointed out. Several iPhone owners reported that their phone cameras were turned on in the background while browsing through posts on the Facebook app.
Many of them took to Twitter to shed light on the issue. One user found that the camera UI for Facebook Stories briefly appeared behind a video when they swivelled their device to the side from portrait to landscape. Then, when they turned it back, the app directly opened the Stories camera.
Another user who goes by the name Joshua Maddux found a similar bug with the Facebook iOS app and tweeted about the unusual behaviour. In his post, Maddux demonstrates how when you view an image on the app and drag it down slightly, you can see the active camera screen running in the background.
Maddux added that he found the same issue on five other iPhone devices running iOS 13.2.2 but not with iOS 12. This suggests that there is a possibility that this is an issue with the iOS 13 software and another addition to the growing list of bugs that users are experiencing after updating their devices to iOS 13. The roll out of iOS 13 has been anything but smooth considering Apple has already released seven iOS software updates in a series of quick-fire fixes since its arrival in September.
The issue has come to Facebook's attention and the company confirmed that the bug was "inadvertently introduced" before adding that it has already started working on a fix. "We have seen no evidence of photos or videos being uploaded due to this bug," a spokesman for Facebook said in a statement obtained by CNN. "We're submitting the fix for this to Apple today."
Needless to say, this could be a big blow for Facebook's image. The company has doubled down on its messages about privacy and security, and a bug like this could very well hamper the company's efforts to improve its reputation after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
