Facebook spying on Instagram users through cameras
Facebook is accused of spying on Instagram users by secretly accessing their smartphone CAMERAS for ‘market research’. Instagram and its parent company are being sued for allegedly spying on users with their mobile phone cameras. The lawsuit was filed in a San Francisco federal court Thursday by a New Jersey Instagram user Brittany Conditi, who claimed Facebook accesses mobile cameras while users are on the app “to collect lucrative and valuable data on its users that it would not otherwise have access to.”
“By obtaining extremely private and intimate personal data on their users, including in the privacy of their own homes, [Facebook is] able to increase their advertising revenue by targeting users more than ever before,” the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit comes after reports that emerged this summer that an Instagram bug appeared to have allowed the company to access iPhone cameras even when they weren’t actively being used. Facebook at the time said that they were working on addressing the bug.
This summer Facebook was also sued in a class-action lawsuit for its use of facial recognition technology. Facebook eventually offered $650 million as a settlement.
The lawsuit comes after Apple’s iOS 14 beta update in July showed a green icon (pictured) on the control panel of an iPhone or iPad screen when an app attempts to infiltrate the camera in the background. A Twitter user by the name of KevDov shared a screenshot that showed Instagram had activated his iPhone camera. A user shared a screenshot of the notification on social media after scrolling through their Instagram feed – it is a round circle with the ‘recorder indicator’ in the center.
Facebook said it was a bug that turned the camera on. ‘We only access your camera when you tell us to – for example when you swipe from Feed to Camera’, a spokesperson told.
New iOS 14 feature warns you if someone is spying on you through your iPhone: Look out for the orange dot at the top of your screen. It features a new ‘warning dot’ that enables users to see whether one of their apps is watching or listening in. This a small orange dot at the top corner of the iPhone’s display to let users know their microphone is activated. It switches to dark green when the camera is activated too, telling iPhone users that apps are ‘watching’.
iPhone users can go to Settings and Privacy to switch off any of their apps’ access to microphones and cameras. The helpful dot is part of Apple’s increasing focus on privacy as part of the new iOS. ‘Privacy is a fundamental human right and at the core of everything we do, Apple says on its website.
Since Apple did it’s best to provide security but the question is are we still safe?
