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Major FaceTime Privacy Bug Lets You Spy on Your Contacts Before They Answer UPDATE

It works with any iPhone and on a Mac computer

Jan 29, 2019 00:59 GMT  ·  By
iPhone XS
   iPhone XS

UPDATE: Group FaceTime is currently unavailable, as Apple has taken down the service in order to come up with a fix. Original story below.

It would appear that a major FaceTime vulnerability has been unearthed recently, which could allow you to spy on your contacts by hearing the audio of their iPhone before they answer.

Today is National Privacy Day, so we can't celebrate the event without a major privacy issue, which was recently discovered in all of Apple's devices supporting the FaceTime app that lets users communicate with each other over Wi-Fi or mobile data using video or audio-only chats.

It would appear that when initiating a video chat with one of your contacts, you will be able to hear on the audio of the respective person before they will answer. To put it simply, you can literally spy on them if you want to with a simple trick that shouldn't be there in the first place, but Apple still allowed it to happen.

Here's how to reproduce the FaceTime bug

Softpedia has reproduced the FaceTime bug with an iPhone 7 and iPhone 6. We initiated a FaceTime video chat from the Phone app from the iPhone 7 device to the iPhone 6 one. While the call is dialing, we swiped up the FaceTime UI from the bottom of the screen and tapped on Add Person.

We've added the iPhone 7's phone number (in your case you'll add your own phone number) to the create a group chat (tap the number a few times if it's grayed out and it will be added). Once we've added the number to the chat we could immediately hear the audio from the iPhone 6 device we were calling even if they haven't answered.

You can watch the video below to see it in action. The bug is present in iOS 12.2 beta, which was installed on our iPhone 7 device, as well as on iOS 12.1.3, which was running on the iPhone 6 device. It also looks like the FaceTime bug can be reproduced on a Mac computer. Only the microphone is exposed, not the camera.

Until Apple releases an emergency update, you can can't do anything to protect your privacy but to uninstall the FaceTime app or simply disable the feature by opening the Settings app and accessing the FaceTime settings from the list. Apple said in a statement that it will fix the bug in an update later this week. Until then, have fun!