Member-only story
SECURITY
Your iPhone Isn’t Listening to You
Though it theoretically could have been a few years ago
There’s a good chance you’ve heard someone say something like the paragraph below or maybe even said it yourself.
“So we were sitting on the couch and we were talking about going on a camping trip. I happened to be looking at my Facebook right then and I swear, five seconds later I saw an ad for camping gear. They listen to us!”
Well, no. Unless you see an orange or green light on your device, neither the camera nor the microphone is recording. So says Apple, Google, Samsung, and probably others, though implementations may vary.
I don’t know about the others, but I did find a case where Apple’s design for this indicator failed. As far as I know from what I read, this leakage was not used by hackers; it was accidentally discovered by a developer who noticed it while working on something else. He reported the bug to Apple, and they gave him $29,500 for finding it and telling them how it could happen.
