Earlier this month it was reported by concerned users that whilst scrolling through Facebooks app, their iPhones cameras were turned on in the background.
Brought to light by multiple posts on twitter, Facebook’s iPhone app contained a bug that whilst users were looking at photos or watching videos, their cameras were activated in the background. This was picked up on by users as after watching a video in full screen, the app layout shifted over to the right slightly. In the open space on the left of the screen, users could now see a preview of the phone’s camera.
In a tweet Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, addressed the bug and said that that company was rolling out a fix. He followed it up with a further tweet:
“We recently discovered our iOS app incorrectly launched in landscape. In fixing that last week in v246 we inadvertently introduced a bug where the app partially navigates to the camera screen when a photo is tapped. We have no evidence of photos/videos uploaded due to this.”
Several users attempted to troubleshoot the bug themselves; uninstalling and reinstalling the app didn’t fix the issue but revoking Facebooks permission to the camera appeared to work. The same area of the screen that displayed the cameras preview, was just black after revoking Facebooks access to the camera.
In order to revoke the Facebook apps access to the camera, open the settings, scroll down to and click on the Facebook section and toggle the switch next to the camera icon to the off position.