14 DAY TRIAL // The upcoming iOS 14 software update for iPhones will come with new privacy controls, including an indicator whenever an application accesses the camera.
And as it turns out, there’s a chance that some apps enable the camera even when they don’t need it.
Instagram is one of the names involved in such a controversy, with some discovering that the Facebook-owned app actually launches the camera even when users do nothing more than scrolling through the feed.
Camera access is required in the Instagram app for things like taking photos and videos, but other than that, the app has no reason to enable the camera for basic activities like a simple browsing through the posts of the accounts someone follows.
Just a bug, fix on its way
However, the camera indicator comes on in Instagram even when the app technically does not require camera access. But according to Instagram itself, the app doesn’t actually turn on the camera, as the whole thing is just a bug that the company is now working on fixing.
In a statement for The Verge, Instagram explains that the app doesn’t access the camera unless it needs it and the user specifically gives their consent.
“We only access your camera when you tell us to — for example, when you swipe from Feed to Camera. We found and are fixing a bug in iOS 14 Beta that mistakenly indicates that some people are using the camera when they aren’t,” a company spokesperson was quoted as saying. “We do not access your camera in those instances, and no content is recorded.”
iOS 14 is currently in preview stage, and users can try it by installing the official beta builds released by Apple. The official launch is schedule to happen in September on the iPhone 6s and newer.