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posted by chromas on Wednesday November 13 2019, @02:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the its-a-feature-not-a-bug dept.

Facebook bug shows camera activated in background during app use

Some people have complained their cameras got turned on while they were looking through Facebook's app.

When you're scrolling through Facebook's app, the social network could be watching you back, concerned users have found. Multiple people have found and reported that their iPhone cameras were turned on in the background while they were looking at their feed.

The issue came to light through several posts on Twitter. Users noted that their cameras were activated behind Facebook's app as they were watching videos or looking at photos on the social network.

After people clicked on the video to full screen, returning it back to normal would create a bug in which Facebook's mobile layout was slightly shifted to the right. With the open space on the left, you could now see the phone's camera activated in the background.

This was documented in multiple cases, with the earliest incident on Nov. 2.

[...] "I thought it was just my phone or the app acting up," Lasafin said in a direct message. "Then I observed it became more persistent that evening."

Facebook would like to assure users that it was unintentional that the layout bug revealed that the camera was secretly activated.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @12:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @12:57PM (#919808)

    Well on a laptop you can open it up and unplug camera yourself. If you are feeling lazy just put tape over it. Embedded microphones will need to be manually removed.