Facebook app secretly accessing your iPhone's camera

Facebook and their privacy woes continue as some users claim the company has been accessing your iPhone camera. A lot of users have confirmed that the Facebook app secretly opens their camera in the background as they scroll through their feed. In a Twitter video confirming the issue with the Facebook app for iOS as it opens a space on the left from where the user can see the iPhone's camera activated in the background.

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

It's not clear how bad the bug is, as to whether it also records or uploads something, we can tell. There is a suggestion that the buggy software update has not been rolled out to everyone worldwide since only some fraction of the users have come out complaining about the issue.

Facebook app on iOS 13.2.2 opens my phone’s rear camera when I open a profile photo swipe down to return (look at the little slit on the left of the video). Is this an app bug or an iOS bug?? @facebook @AppleSupport pic.twitter.com/WlhSXZulqx

— Daryl Lasafin (@dzlasafin) November 10, 2019

The Hacker News confirmed the authenticity of the bug from Facebook.

Looks like it's real.  

We recently discovered that version 244 of the Facebook iOS app would incorrectly launch in landscape mode. 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. We have seen no evidence of photos or videos being uploaded due to this bug. We’re submitting the fix for this to Apple today. 

Triggering this bug activated the camera preview, and once triggered, the preview remained active until you tapped elsewhere in the app. At no point was the preview content stored by the app or uploaded to our servers, Guy Rosen, VP Integrity at Facebook said. We've confirmed that we didn't upload anything to FB due to this bug and that the camera didn’t capture anything since it was in preview mode. We’ve submitted a fixed version to the App Store which is already rolling out.

Since none of the Android users has yet noticed or complained about a similar flaw in Facebook, it seems like the bug only affects some Facebook for iOS users.