Apple Urged to Issue Formal Warning Over Apps Secretly Turning Your Camera On

Someone might be watching you!

Apple products and the app store practically come hand in hand these days. If you get an Apple product, you’re going to install apps onto it. If I haven’t blown your mind away too much with that revelation then stick with me, I do have a point.

Often, you’ll find or look for an app with a very niche purpose. For example, camera overlay software or a voice sampler. While in the majority of instances these are fine, however, in a report via the Telegraph, users might need to double check what they are actually downloading.

Only recently Apple reported that the app store had achieved over 15 billion downloads.

Rockwell once sang that “I always feel like somebody’s watching me”. I have no idea whether he has an iPhone or not. However, rather than being paranoid, he might actually now be right.

Am I being watched on my Apple product?

Felix Crause works ironically for Google as a security researcher. He found that with the development of apps in a certain way, you could create a backdoor specifically in the IOS software. This IOS backdoor allowed him to access an iPhone’s camera. This access allowed him to take photographs every 1 second. In his words, he calls it a: “privacy loophole that can be abused by iOS apps”.

The flaw has only been created due to Apple’s recent inclusion of facial recognition. While Apple has said this does work entirely as intended, Felix Crause has urged Apple to issue a formal warning over the potential security breach. Until the matter has been fixed (which it undoubtedly will), Felix Crause has strongly recommended Apple consider adding an option to make app camera access always by permission only and that the permission only be temporary.

While the existence of such apps which exploit this is not known, the likelihood of this happening to you is not great. It is, however, significantly more likely if you delve into the ‘free’ aspects of shovelware app software. You might, however, for the moment be better sticking to what you know, such as maybe GTA San Andreas.

Given this, you want to maybe throw a towel over your phone now. Perhaps turn your docking station around. You know, just in case.