- Facebook acknowledged that it had a bug that caused unintended camera access and a fix has been submitted
Recently, a number of Facebook users have been concerned about the social network inadvertently having access to smartphone cameras while the feed is being scrolled.
The bug was discovered by Joshua Maddux. You will see how the bug works in the Twitter video below:
Found a @facebook #security & #privacy issue. When the app is open it actively uses the camera. I found a bug in the app that lets you see the camera open behind your feed. Note that I had the camera pointed at the carpet. pic.twitter.com/B8b9oE1nbl
— Joshua Maddux (@JoshuaMaddux) November 10, 2019
“Found a @facebook #security & #privacy issue. When the app is open it actively uses the camera. I found a bug in the app that lets you see the camera open behind your feed. Note that I had the camera pointed at the carpet,” wrote Maddux in a tweet.
Twitter user Neo QA also spotted the bug:
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
Facebook users have already been on the edge with the multiple data breaches and security issues that the social network dealt with in the past few years. And this bug did not help.
According to TechCrunch, this bug only affects iOS 13 users who granted access to the camera and microphone. Facebook vice president of integrity Guy Rosen wrote in a tweet that this “sounds like a bug” and the company is now investigating the issue.
“We recently discovered that version 244 of the Facebook iOS app would incorrectly launch in landscape mode,” said a Facebook spokesperson via TechCrunch. “In fixing that issue last week in v246 — launched on November 8th — we inadvertently introduced a bug that caused the app to partially navigate to the camera screen adjacent to News Feed when users tapped on photos.”
The spokesperson also said that the company has not seen any evidence of photos or videos being uploaded due to the bug. And a bug fix was submitted to be approved by Apple already.
