Instagram promises to fix bug after always accessing the camera on iOS 14

https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/25/instagram-promises-to-fix-bug-after-being-exposed-by-always-accessing-the-camera-on-ios-14/

by electic • 6 years ago

202 90 6 years ago

9to5mac.com

AVTizzle• 6 years ago

Instagram*

*by Facebook

bergstromm4663• 6 years ago

This is fucking important. I think it's deceiving to refer to different child companies as if they are separate entities, instead of refering to the mother entity. It only benefits the corporation when this happens, not customers. I'd even call it Doublespeak or a PR strategy. Divide and conquer. The illusion of choice. Monopoly is the name of the game.

"Competition is for losers."

— Peter Thiel

ComputerGuru• 6 years ago

Except we’re not talking about companies, we are talking about the actual app in question. The app is called instagram and it is separate from another app called Facebook by the same company.

annadane• 6 years ago

I fail to see why this is downvoted. Completely agree.

perryizgr8• 6 years ago

I think they do it so it is quicker to show the viewfinder when you go to the photo mode. I think Snapchat does the same.

blisseyGo• 6 years ago

Not sure if Snapchat has changed recently (I haven't used it in a long time) but before, Snapchat's first screen on launch was the camera viewfinder.

Nextgrid5• 6 years ago

Yes that was indeed the case, but the twist is that even if you scrolled to the side views, the camera would still remain active. They actually had (still have?) a low power mode toggle in the settings that I believe deactivated this behavior.

jchonphoenix2• 6 years ago

This title is editorialized. The article confirms that this was due to a bug in iOS and is not Instagram's fault.

WilTimSon• 6 years ago

Interesting to see the difference in perspectives: Reddit is jumping on that quote about it being a bug and saying it's definitely intentional, while HN is taking a more conservative approach. Personally, I always err on the side of bug/incompetence rather than maliciousness in matters like this because even Facebook isn't brazen enough to pull something this obvious.

jchonphoenix2• 6 years ago

I think the key here is that it's a bug in iOS, not in Instagram. So FB isn't even the responsible party.

Additionally, it's a beta version of iOS, so we're supposed to be expecting bugs anyway.

simonbarker873• 6 years ago

Don’t put down to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

It’s generally a happier way to live and view the world.

Shank• 6 years ago

This is just the TikTok clipboard problem all over again. Reasonable developers who've dealt with initializing APIs that are complex or not their initial forte will make decisions like "initialize the camera on app open if we need it and then pull data from it later." It's pretty trivial to make that mistake.

I wouldn't even be surprised if this is part of Instagram having a goal to make opening camera capture really fast. They've done very similar things intentionally before. [0][1]

[0] https://speakerdeck.com/mikeyk/secrets-to-lightning-fast-mob... [1]: https://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/05/01/instagrams-secret-t...

saagarjha2• 6 years ago

The article confirms that this was due to a bug in iOS and is not Instagram's fault.

Where does it do that? As far as I can tell, Instagram is calling the camera APIs when it doesn't need to and iOS is flagging that as it should.

spsful3• 6 years ago

“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,” the spokesperson said. “We do not access your camera in those instances, and no content is recorded.”

kirillzubovsky• 6 years ago

As someone who has done a little bit of iOS development for fun, I wouldn't be surprised if this is an actual bug. There used to be 10 different ways to do the same thing inside iOS, and neither one was "correct."

Being a photo app, they probably figured out that having instant access to Camera is their top priority, and because you are allowed to access camera in the background and keep it on, there was no harm in doing so.

Of course one could also go deep and assume that Facebook is running all video through an ML that picks out faces, location, items, and whatever else they can grab around your surrounding, and then covert that into ad-intent, but however sexy that sounds from technical point, they are after all a public company and need to play by the rules. Unlikely to take on such a massive intrusion of your privacy, knowing that eventually it would get discovered.

usefulcat• 6 years ago

Unlikely to take on such a massive intrusion of your privacy, knowing that eventually it would get discovered.

I don't think that's a reason for them not to do it. They could just claim it was an accident, they weren't really collecting the data, etc etc ad infinitum and most people would continue to use facebook just as they always have.

The day I uninstalled the facebook app was the day it asked for permission to read all text messages (on top of the many, many other permissions it already had). I figured the next step would be audio and video (after all, there wasn't much left to ask for at that point).

yumraj• 6 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if this is an actual bug.

Under other circumstances, yes perhaps. But in the case of a Facebook, with their complete disregard for privacy and search for more and more ways to collect data, this seems like an explicit feature implementation.

temporary123453• 6 years ago

complete disregard

Complete? Aren’t you exaggerating?

There were hundreds much worse leaks than any Facebook leak. Any credit card leak is much worse. But Facebook is an easy hatred target.

Nothing bad really happened as result of these leaks. Nobody harmed, nobody lost money, and don’t start again on that CA story which happened and fixed several years before you learned about it.

roughly• 6 years ago

rough experience in a company with an ads department is one ought consider them like some kind of fungus - they may not have been part of a given effort to begin with, but without careful efforts to keep them away, they're bound to colonize whatever it is that gets created eventually.

whoopdedo• 6 years ago

Wouldn't a network analysis be able to detect a difference in the amount of traffic coming out of the phone? Measure with and without Instagram installed, active, background, and given or denied camera access. If it's capturing images in the background that data has to go somewhere. Even if it batches for sending later. Another way to find out is to feed it "interesting" images with faces and objects, then compare if the camera is pointed at a blank wall for the same amount of time. If the phone is significantly noisier then you can conclude it's actually processing the images and not just dumping them to the bitbucket.

dewey• 6 years ago

Even if it batches for sending later.

Would probably be very hard to spot that if you piggyback on normal story/image upload traffic payloads. Seems like a lot of work for something that's not really that helpful or easier to accomplish.

LoSboccacc• 6 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if this is an actual bug

https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-bug-has-camera-activated-...

funny however how often this 'bug' reappears

spsful3• 6 years ago

It's noted in the article that no photos or videos were taken when Facebook inadvertently showed the camera page to the user. If they weren't capturing anything, then it really was a bug.

quotz• 6 years ago

Nobody actually posts directly through their camera, but rather uploads preshotted pics

coralreef• 6 years ago

You'd have to qualify "nobody" with some statistics, because of the millions of users, I'm sure some of them use IG's camera.

Also IG Stories is where all the filters live.

dpacmittal• 6 years ago

At this point, does Facebook really deserve benefit of the doubt?

ignoramous2• 6 years ago

At this point, does Facebook really deserve benefit of the doubt?

You have a point: Facebook is using the iPhone’s camera as users scroll their feed, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513471

chance_state• 6 years ago

For the last 5 years, we accidentally recorded billions of people's reactions to ads as they scrolled past them, then accidentally fed that data into our ad placement algorithm.
We're really, reallllllly sorry and promise to do better.

Any day now....

dorkwood• 6 years ago

Let's say that it was in fact intended as a user experience optimization, as you suggested. If you were Facebook, and you now had access to the camera's feed when it wasn't in use, would you really be able to restrain yourself from violating the user's privacy? I imagine for Facebook it would be like seeing a freshly cooked pie on a window sill.

badrabbit• 6 years ago

If they get caught they just pay a few billion in fines. They do that all the time and still turn a profit. Maybe their shadiness attracts advertisers and makes up for it in part. Criminal consequence is needed to deter them at this point.

modzu• 6 years ago

facebook has done worse and they aren't going anywhere over privacy concerns (privacy is antithetical to their raison d'etre)

and budgeting for fines and legal fees as contingency for when pseudo legal practises that have business beneifits are discovered is standard practice in most large corporations

ponker• 6 years ago

Sure, but you’re seeing the effect of earning a bad reputation, which is that all of your actions are interpreted uncharitably.

aahhahahaaa• 6 years ago

Also... wouldn't the bandwidth of streaming back all that video be pretty obvious? Seems like it would take a lot of resources for data they probably already have anyway.

varenc2• 6 years ago

Agreed. No matter what advanced stenography they try to use, if the app’s upload volume increases when given camera permissions that'll be easy to spot. That alone wouldn't prove anything, but it would definitely be interesting enough to merit a deeper investigation. Jailbreaks on iOS are currently flourishing, and developing the multiple exploits needed to pull that off makes reverse-engineering the Instagram app seems easy by comparison.

newscracker• 6 years ago

but however sexy that sounds from technical point, they are after all a public company and need to play by the rules. Unlikely to take on such a massive intrusion of your privacy, knowing that eventually it would get discovered.

You completely lost me here. We’re talking about Facebook, the company with a near infinite supply and history of privacy issues. Facebook has shown that rules don’t apply to it for as long as it can get away with it. Behind the scenes, it laughs at fines imposed by governments because they’re too tiny to have a material impact on the future of the company and its earnings.

karxxm2• 6 years ago

The Beta for ios 14 is out there for how long? And this is only now being noticed?

saagarjha2• 6 years ago

The first beta for iOS 14 was released on June 22.

karxxm2• 6 years ago

Yeah exactly. I thought people would directly check all the Facebook apps for privacy concerns

iRobbery• 6 years ago

Wouldn't everybody notice their battery draining? The article doesn't mention this.

coronadisaster2• 6 years ago

sometimes my battery start draining a lot faster and my phone becomes really hot while I'm not doing anything special... not sure what is causing it yet.

addicted4• 6 years ago

My wife, on me telling her about this, pointed the most obvious way Instagram could be using this, without storing, recording, or transmitting anything.

As you scroll your feed, they analyze your face, and use your expressions to see how you feel about a particular post. It’s like “likes” on steroids.

They already have the face detection, expression detection, etc code built into their app through the filters and those act in real time and locally. It would be super easy to redirect that towards analyzing user expressions in response to posts they may be reading at the time.

mgraczyk3• 6 years ago

If only battery life/processing/machine learning were that good. It's possible companies would do things like this if were technically feasible, but we're a long way away (I work on camera ML at IG).

The correct answer to what is going on is Facebook's official response in the article.

notnap• 6 years ago

Battery life always takes a dive when you have Fb apps installed, including Instagram.

addicted4• 6 years ago

Do Instagram filters destroy battery life?

Because that’s all they need. And even less than normal because you don’t need to figure out bunny ears and exaggerated smiles. Simply whether a person is smiling or not.

Nextgrid5• 6 years ago

They can always cache the data and do the processing at a later time when your device is charging and/or when you do something resource-intensive (like uploading a video, etc) to conceal the extra resource usage.

wackget• 6 years ago

I utterly despise all things FB, but seriously... citation needed.

addicted4• 6 years ago

Citation needed for what?

It’s obvious speculation.

But it makes a lot of sense.

alfiedotwtf• 6 years ago

Where’s the national campaign to dump Instagram like there is Tik Tok?

spoopyskelly• 6 years ago

Instagram isn't owned by a foreign adversary that wants to destroy your economy, so there isn't any campaign.

dylan604• 6 years ago

No, but it is owned by FB who wants to own your economy

rydre• 6 years ago

Robots are foreign adversaries.

mgraczyk3• 6 years ago

For those commenting that IG may be secretly and nefariously using data from the camera for business purposes; IG has a "download your data tool". It includes all the of your data that IG stores. Spoiler Alert: silently-recorded feeds from your camera are not in that dump.

marketneutral• 6 years ago

The fact that the suspected secret data is not in the public “download your data” tool is not really an argument that it doesn’t exist.

dencodev• 6 years ago

Agreed, and I think this is obvious. Facebook probably has a thousand metrics of how long you spend looking at things, what you tend to look at, how likely you are to look at something different. None of this is downloadable.

coronadisaster2• 6 years ago

Does this data dump include the metadata for the data transfers made to the NSA?

cwhiz• 6 years ago

Uh huh. Sure it does. And who is auditing that?

mgraczyk3• 6 years ago

The FTC

Nextgrid5• 6 years ago

Just like Facebook's "download your data" tool used to not include the companies that shared information about you... until they decided to make this public (and provide a UI to see it) and then suddenly it appeared in the data dump.

I am not saying whether the camera behavior is incompetence or malice, I am just saying that "download your data" features rarely give you all your data, both for malicious reasons (in the case of Facebook) as well as technical reasons (some data in raw form might belong to multiple individuals so you can't just give them that raw version and need to write extra code to sanitize that data which might not have been done yet so until then you would be missing that data).

tareqak• 6 years ago

Can we please talk about the elephant in the room?

There are software engineers, designers, project managers, etc., at Facebook who implemented this bug/feature, right? Given the competitive nature of recruiting and employment at Facebook, this feature was not thrown in by accident, or as a bad joke. This behaviour was implemented as part of a bigger feature, or by itself. It was designed, prioritized, and consciously scheduled for implementation, testing, and deployment. It won against other competing ideas with respect to scheduling, budget, and fulfilling team, departmental, and organizational objective key results (OKRs).

Artifacts that mention this behaviour exist: whether it be in email chains, project-planning and task-management tools like JIRA, commit messages from version control systems like git, deployment logs, and many, many other such things.

Some of those people participate in this forum. Some others no doubt know who they are or who they could be to fair degree of accuracy. Do the rest of us care? Or, do we just point fingers like we are doing now and then go back to hibernating / feigning ignorance until the next time something like this happens again?

Nextgrid5• 6 years ago

Given the competitive nature of recruiting and employment at Facebook

Interviewing at FAANG is about cracking the interview and the tests; it doesn't reflect all the skills that would be relevant in the real world. You can very well be a mediocre engineer but grind Leetcode all day long and eventually pass the interview (and the reverse is also true, a lot of otherwise great engineers wouldn't be able to pass their test), so just because the code is written by FAANG doesn't mean it's bug-free or that the bugs were deemed important enough to be fixed.

throwaway84632• 6 years ago

For a while already I have been noticing the red "screen recording" bar on top of the screen appearing and quickly going away at random moments while Instagram is open (since iOS 13 at least). Seems to happen usually while I'm browsing photo library and/or post drafts.

Anyone else noticed that? Is it along the same lines as the camera usage bug, or maybe they are just ferociously recording app usage analytics?

The worst possibility is that IG's always recording my screen (perhaps in concert with the front camera) but successfully suppressing the bar most of the time, and only sometimes the workaround stops working so screeen recording bar shows up for a second. That would be so far from a welcome development.

Nextgrid5• 6 years ago

I doubt it's screen recording; as far as I know no third-party app can record the screen and even if they could there's easier ways to collect analytics than record a huge video which you then need to upload & process. I'm pretty sure the red bar also appears when an app is using the microphone in the background, which would be more likely in this case.

throwaway84632• 6 years ago

The icon showing up is the double circle one, not the mic.

Edit: can't remember that for sure, could be no icon then you'd be correct, not that it helps much (not sure which one would be worse).

blackrock• 6 years ago

What? The iPhone’s front camera is always on? Are they taking regular video snapshots of you in the background?

Instagram promises to fix bug after always accessing the camera on iOS 14

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