Some users have noticed that Instagram is unexpectedly accessing the camera, reports The Verge.
Users have reported that the green "camera on" indicator was displayed in iOS 14 when scrolling through their feed, but not taking a photo or a video. In a statement to The Verge, a spokesperson for Instagram said that the behavior was a bug and is being fixed.
"We only access your camera when you tell us to — for example, when you swipe from Feed to Camera. We found and are fixing a bug in iOS 14 Beta that mistakenly indicates that some people are using the camera when they aren't," the spokesperson said. "We do not access your camera in those instances, and no content is recorded."
Instagram's bug is the latest in a series of unexpected app behavior controversies revealed by iOS 14's aggressive privacy notifications. iOS 14 notifies users when an app or widget pastes text from the clipboard or accesses the camera or microphone. Since the release of the iOS 14 developer and public beta, a large number of popular apps, such as LinkedIn, Reddit, and TikTok, have been discovered to be covertly accessing clipboard data.
Last year, Instagram's parent company, Facebook, was found to be accessing the camera in the background whenever the app was in use, without the users' knowledge.
neoanguiano on December 17th, 2020 at 08:23 UTC »
so facebook is saying we are standing against apple, because theyre limiting our spying?
burgonies on December 17th, 2020 at 04:21 UTC »
Remember when Facebook was playing a silent audio file so it would continue running in the background and not get preempted by the OS?
royalewithcheese4272 on December 17th, 2020 at 03:36 UTC »
Man I really need to delete FB and IG, slimy company, shady business practices, anti consumer bullshit, lack of social responsibility, not to mention the lizard for CEO