FaceTime bug: Apple glitch lets caller snoop on iPhone audio and video before recipients pick up

News of the bug emerged, coincidentally, on 'National Privacy Day'

Apple has admitted there is a bug that lets callers see and hear video and audio from a recipient’s iPhone – even if they haven’t actually picked up the phone.

The flaw was identified by a tech blog which found that, in some cases, callers using the group chat function on FaceTime would be able to access a recipient’s microphone and camera without their knowledge.

It enables callers to briefly eavesdrop on whatever the recipient is doing, until the call rings out. According to the blog 9to5Mac, pressing certain buttons while the call was incoming would then make the phone also share video.

News of the bug emerged, coincidentally, on “National Privacy Day” in the US, and users were quick to take to social media to express their concerns.

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey suggested people “disable FaceTime for now until Apple fixes”.

Apple said in a statement that: “We’re aware of this issue and we have identified a fix that will be released in a software update later this week.”

But in the meantime, the company appears to have taken down the FaceTime group chat feature altogether. Apple’s “system status” page showed all its services were operational except for an issue with the video calling servers. “Group FaceTime is temporarily unavailable”, a message read.

Apple announced the group video chat feature last summer, but then removed it from early test versions of its iOS 12 operating system. Apple released the feature to the public in iOS 12.1 in late October.