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Bug Blamed for Instagram Unexpectedly Accessing Camera in iOS 14

This is getting ridiculous. Apple and Google should team up to Sherlock Facebook. Build in all the social features inside of iOS and Android, compatible with one another and make it so that users have no reason to go outside of their phones native features to get what they get out of Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp.

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How Apple can help kill Facebook

Facebook has grown very problematic in recent years, having gone from a benign friends aggregator to a monolith literally capable of destroying democracy as we know it. My intention for this thread isn't to politicize the topic. After all, whether you're conservative or liberal, we all value...
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I remember in iOS 12 when I used to leave my Flashlight on while watching YouTube videos at night for backlighting, the flashlight would go off and back on while watching videos as if the camera was taking pictures.
That hasn't happened in iOS 13 yet.
 
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Tofupunch said:
But then why didn't just say that? Instead, they called it a bug. You have a valid point for the app to function that way and sure, the code would naturally reflect that. But by calling it a bug, it causes suspicion. And Facebook doesn't have the greatest reputation for protecting user data to begin with. Hence the reaction. Just my thoughts. 🤷🏽‍♂️
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I wouldn't be surprised if they’re running the beta and scrambling to release an update before they get caught in the official release.
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Idk dude. I don’t know enough of the specifics of the situation to know why they didn’t or did say what they did

But everyone else around here seems to know a lot of inside info so.
 
Instagram is kinda creepy. Read the replies to ads. Nearly every one is spammed by people saying you can purchase product x from company y for cheaper. Sometimes hundreds of comments all saying the same thing. And company y is probably not a company/e-commerce site you’ve ever heard of. Do companies pay people to spam Instagram ads?
 
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BasicGreatGuy said:
I am rather surprised so many MacRumors veterans use Instagram and Facebook, in spite of the fact said company has been caught lying numerous times to the public. They shouldn’t be trusted in any fashion. For safety purposes, it would be a good idea to remove from your Apple devices and close down accounts.
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Facebook is still evil.

I had closed my account permanently around 2014. At that time, it would enter grace period at least two weeks. At said times deletion would be canceled if I login. Of course I didn't do any login attempts.

But what? Around 2018 suddenly I got email from Facebook, asking me to check out my account and asking for group invitation. This is ridiculous since it should be deleted four years ago. Sometimes I still receive email like that until now...

Facebook was lie about deletion. Even when I didn't touch FB for years, I suspect they still hold my data. For now, all my router and device have hardcoded host block for any FB links and resources including their CDN. I was lazy to do re-login and trying second deletion...it waste time so I choose block everything FB including Instagram ad WhatsApp.
 
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Speaking of apps doing shady things which iOS 14 is exposing, I have a crappy little meme app installed - had it for years - it’s reading the contents of the clipboard every time it’s opened. There’s absolutely no reason I can think of for it to be doing this, other than to harvest data.

I’ve tried reporting it though Apple support, but I doubt they’ll do anything, especially while iOS 14 is still in beta. The point is, it would probably be doing the same thing on iOS 13 and anything anyway.

I wish there was a way to deny clipboard access from certain apps. Either completely lock it out, or prevent it from reading without the user explicitly hitting the “Paste” button.
 
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I have iPhone SE. so, maybe the more expensive phones have it. but, there isn't an "green light" indicator on my iPhone when the camera is on. and the article says IOS14. which is the iPhone operating system, no the Mac operating system. which does have a "green light" indicator. this article doesn't make sense.
 
iGobbleoff said:
Delete the app. Switch to the website. Works just as well
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That's true across the board. Why do people have dozens of apps from different companies on their phone when the website works just as well.

Just as well except that a lot of companies now cripple their website version and put in constant nags to use the app. Restaurants and some businesses offer discounts in the app too. They reason they try so hard to get you in the app is all the tools it gives them to spy on you and track you. But we now live in a world where 95% of people will sell a 24/7 live GPS feed of themselves for 10 cents off a big mac once in a while, so this is what happens.
 
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I’ve officially removed all Facebook apps from my phone. Can’t wait for iOS 14 to get here.
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jef0707 said:
I have iPhone SE. so, maybe the more expensive phones have it. but, there isn't an "green light" indicator on my iPhone when the camera is on. and the article says IOS14. which is the iPhone operating system, no the Mac operating system. which does have a "green light" indicator. this article doesn't make sense.
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There’s no green light indicator for the iPhone as far as I’m aware and I’m on the 11 Pro Max.
 
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Name it whatever. No difference between accidental and deliberate. The system OS failed to protect unauthorized access.
 
thefourthpope said:
I agree but IG is useful in some respects. We post for work on it, as my university institute needs to communicate with students where they are. I post separately to be in touch with other beekeepers, as that’s where they are (I hope to revert to more direct and in-person community once COVID allows meetings). Plus there’s some fun content on there. I do my best to use with caution; it’s the best I can do.
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I agree with you, I also have commercial accounts and a personal account on Instagram and I admit I use it for both purposes, their reach is incredible. Facebook I am not a fan of, and WhatsApp is simply the best messaging app in the world, at least the most used one and cross-platform friendly. I have family, friends and colleagues all around the world, and until a good alternative to WhatsApp exists I will be stuck using it.
 
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I particularly like how Instagram have phrased their response to make it seem like the bug is with the iOS 14 “camera is in use” indicator light.
 
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zackkitzmiller said:
I'm sort of amazed at all of the comments in this thread. It's like not a single person in this thread has written software before -- let alone deal with iOS Obj-C or Swift. It's incredibly easy to not deregister connection to various APIs which is exactly what a system level indicator would expose via the camera API. I'm not saying FB/Instagram is in the right here, but damn. This stuff can legitimately happen.
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Yep, lots of senseless paranoia (and I’m saying this as a pretty fierce digital privacy advocate) in this thread. The “green light” indicating camera access in the status bar in iOS 14 means that an app has a camera session open, not necessarily that it’s actually capturing any data, let alone sending it anywhere. Since apps must manually start and stop camera sessions, it’s likely they had a code path to take a user from a view that accessed the camera to the feed where they simply forgot to call the stopRunning() method on the session — not capturing anything, not transmitting it. Avoid attributing to malice that which can be explained adequately by incompetence. Developers are humans, too.

If we want to talk about bugs like this, though, we can also talk about how iOS’s Camera app accesses the microphone when taking a photo even when Live Photos is disabled and it has no reason whatsoever to access the microphone. Yes, in iOS 14.
 
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twistedpixel8 said:
As a software dev, I’d really like to see proof (code) that this was a bug. You don’t just “accidentally” call the camera API.

I hope there’s an investigation into this.
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Chances are they started a camera session for a legitimate purpose (for a user to post on their story or whatever, I hardly use Instagram), then when the user was done they forgot to stop the camera session, which must be done manually. As a developer, surely you’ve read the docs and discovered that an app must manually stop any camera session that it opens, which introduces room for human error where that might not happen by accident, especially in more complex apps like Instagram.
 
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So, let me see if I got this straight. Does this mean that any app on iOS 13 that you gave access to the camera can take pictures anytime they want without notifying you? And we are all upset at Facebook instead of Apple for enabling this behavior for years?
 
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