Lately, fans of iOS devices have seen many FaceTime failures. Users reported about Mac FaceTime camera not working and other related issues. However, it looks like this app still requires some serious troubleshooting because users keep revealing more and more new bugs.
Recently, users have discovered another serious technical defect in the work of the FaceTime app. Disquieted iPhone owners soon made the information about the new bug widely known through social networks. This bug makes you receive the audio from the recipient’s smartphone before he or she declines or accepts the call. Soon after the FaceTime failure was noticed, Apple responded to the users’ concerns promising to fix this in a new software update.
What makes so many iPhone users worried is the fact that this bug in the app allows pretty much anyone to listen in on any user. This implies that Apple has some serious issues with privacy that can negatively affect the company’s reputation. However, from the call recipient’s side, you can’t spy any signs or proof that you listened in on because the app still rings as it’s supposed to and works just fine. To complicate matters, it was reported that the same bug could also expose the video from your phone’s camera.
This failure affects all Apple devices that have iOS 12.1 or later updates. In the web, you can already find plenty of reports from people, who reproduced and recorder the bug.
If you want to test it yourself, here is how it works:
- Call another iPhone user via FaceTime;
- Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and then click on Add Person button while the call is dialing;
- When the Add Person tab opens, add your phone number there;
- This will start a group call, and you will be able to hear your contact’s audio before he or she accepts or declines your call.
From your device, it will look like the recipient has already accepted the call and joined the chat, while on his or her iPhone the call will be still ringing.
As you can imagine, the damage potential of such a bug is enormous. Any iOS user can listen to the pieces of other person’s conversation either intentionally or even without realizing what is going on. And, unfortunately, we can’t define how to protect ourselves until Apple does something to eliminate this failure. Probably the only way to avoid risks at this point is to turn your FaceTime off. To do, you need to go to your iPhone’s Settings, then open FaceTime tab and disable this feature.
If you don’t want to disable FaceTime, the only thing you can do is to bear in mind that whenever you get an incoming call, the person on the other end can be listening in to what you are saying.
Another thing you have to keep in mind is that the caller can also see the video from your iPhone. This only happens if a recipient hits the Power button from the smartphone’s Lock screen while the incoming call is ringing. In this case, the person, who is receiving a call, can hear the audio from your side, not knowing that their video and audio are also sent back to the caller.
Does this bug appear on all Apple devices? Recently, we have tested a FaceTime call from iPhone X to iPhone XR, and the test has confirmed the presence of this failure. Later, we also tried calling from iPhone to Mac and the same bug was revealed again, with only one difference – since the call rings longer on Mac, it gives the caller more time to listen in.
We hope to see a solution delivered along with the software update, as Apple promised. Until then, we recommend all iOS users to be careful and turn off FaceTime on their devices.
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