Your Privacy is At Risk And You Don’t Even Know It
It seems that Apple is going down a very steep hill, very quickly. If you have an iPhone that runs on any of the iOS 12 iterations and you’re a FaceTime user, then your privacy is at risk as of this very moment.
The bug allows people to listen in on your conversations and access your front camera through the FaceTime app even without you accepting the call.
Anyone Can Hack You
As much as that sounds like some next level IT hacking, it’s actually pretty easy to do. It’s so easy to do that it only takes 2 very simple steps to do it and the bug was accidentally discovered by a 14-year-old on January 19, 2019.
The boy’s mother proceeded to file a report to Apple but has since claimed that her report was ignored. In it she details how her son created a Group FaceTime with his friends to play Fortnite and was surprised to find out that he was already able to hear his friend even without him accepting the call.
The worst thing about it privacy bug is that you won’t even know that your conversations have been compromised and who was behind it, nor when the hacking took place.
Your phone could literally be in your pocket during an important meeting and someone interested in that meeting could easily listen in without your knowledge.
Lawsuit from A Lawyer Over FaceTime Privacy Bug
Apple has since been faced with a lawsuit since a lawyer claimed that one his private conversations with a client was compromised through the FaceTime app.
Apple responded by disabling any sort of group calls on the app on the last week of January 2019 and promised to fix the bug by the end of the week.
Since the bug has been made public, people have also discovered that once the Group FaceTime has been initiated, the caller is able to listen in on the person on the other end and when the person presses the power button, it then gives the caller access to the person’s front camera.
So just when you thought you successfully silenced an incoming call, you’re actually giving the caller even more access.
Apple’s Worst iOS to Date
Apart from the fact that your privacy can be so easily compromised by anybody in your contacts list, the iOS 12 and its iterations have brought about so much inconvenience that it’s been called the worst iOS Apple ever designed.
Other bugs have been found to make calls impossible. One woman reported that since the update, she has not been able to get a single bar of service from her network provider. That means she is unable to make and receive calls and texts unless she’s connected to a Wi-Fi network.
Then there was the UI design mishap when it made things hard and inconvenient for people to switch between the front and rear cameras while on FaceTime.
For some of the latest iPhone models, charging times became distorted and battery capacity simply didn’t make sense.
These are just some of the worst issues that the iOS 12 and its iterations have inflicted upon Apple users. There could be more that just haven’t seen the light of day yet.
What You Can Do As an Apple User
It’s highly likely that if you own an iPhone, you also own other Apple products. Although everything mentioned is about just the iPhone, there is no saying how bad the bugs can be across all your Apple products.
With that said, we advise that you take extra precautions when using your iPhones, or any Apple product for that matter when having private conversation. Make sure to take any and all issues up with Apple so that nothing gets overlooked. Report it for your sake and for the good of every other Apple user.
