The Spy Among Us

Multiple sources are reporting a feature of iPhone apps that is a major privacy concern.  This is not new and it also is an issue on Android phones, but, for some reason, everyone seems to be highlighting the problem with iPhones.  PERHAPS, that is because it it is being exploited in the wild on iPhones – I don’t know.

The short version goes like this –

IF you EVER allow an app to access your phone’s cameras, you have lost control of it.  That app can access your camera – both front facing and rear facing – whenever it wants to.  It does not have to ask you to access the camera.

You are trusting that app not to abuse that trust.

Actually, it kind of depends on whether YOU installed the app or someone else installed it – with or without your knowledge.  For example, here are 5 spying apps that people intentionally install.  It may be a parent or a spouse, but it is likely not you who installed the app.  Sometimes parents want to track what their kids are doing.  Sometimes a spouse wants to spy on their significant other.

The app could upload the photos to the net and/or it could process the images – say to examine your facial images as you look at the screen.

One part of the problem is that there is no indication that the camera, front or back, is on.  As a side note, while there is a light on many PCs indicating the camera is running, that is a bit of software and the camera COULD be turned on without the light being on.

Apple (and Google) could change the camera rules and require the user to approve camera access every single time the camera wants to turn on – but that would be inconvenient.

One of my contacts at the FBI forwarded an alert about this today, so I suspect that this is being actively exploited.

The FBI gave a couple of suggestions –

1. Only install apps from the official app store, not anyplace else.
2. Don’t click on links in emails

In reality, the only recommendation that the FBI made that will actually work is this next one:

3. Place a piece of tape over the front and rear camera.

Ponder this thought –

The camera sits on your table in front of you;  it is in your bedroom, potentially capturing whatever you do there; it is in your bathroom. You get the idea.

Just in case your were not paranoid enough before.

Information for this post came from The Hacker News and The Register.

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