The iOS app of Facebook opens the iPhone's camera in the background when users scroll the Facebook feed. But it is a bug, not a feature, says Facebook.
The company responded to concerns raised by Facebook user Joshua Maddux, who posted a video of the Facebook app on Twitter, showing that the phone is active in the background when users view their Facebook feed.
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
Maddux tested five iPhones running iOS 13.2.2, the latest version of iOS, and confirmed that the camera glitch affected all iPhones running that version. It does not appear to affect devices running iOS 12.
Guy Rosen, vice president of the integrity department of Facebook, responded to Maddux, stating that “it sounds like a bug” and that the company is looking into the issue.
iOS 13.2.2 was released on October 28, and since then many other users have reported the same camera issue when using the Facebook app.
Facebook reportedly pushed a fix to the App Store on Tuesday. Rosen also provided an explanation for what was happening with the camera when using the Facebook app.
“We recently discovered that our iOS app was launching with errors,” Rosen said. “To fix that, last week in v246 we inadvertently introduced a bug where the app would partially scroll to the camera screen when a photo. We have no evidence of any photos/ videos being uploaded due to this.”
The bug also appears to only affect iPhone users who have granted Facebook access to camera . Until an update to the Facebook iOS app is approved and released, users can prevent the background camera activity by revoking the app's access to the camera.
Accident or not, the reactions to Maddux's tweets reflect how cynical people are about Facebook, which has created many trust issues in recent years.
The most significant of these problems was the clumsy handling of the Cambridge Analytica and more recently CEO Mark Zuckerberg's statements defending the acceptance of political ads and his opposition to the idea of blocking political ads that contain false statements.
If Facebook users want to revoke the app's access to the iPhone camera, they should open the “Settings” app, go to Facebook's settings, tap “Photos” and set the access to “Never”.
