Is Facebook Secretly Accessing Your iPhone's Camera? Some Users Claimed

It appears that Facebook is at the centre of yet another issue involving privacy.

Reportedly, multiple iPhone users have come forward on social media complaining that the Facebook app secretly activates their smartphone's camera in the background while they scroll through their Facebook feeds or looking at the photos on the social network.

As shown in the Twitter videos below, when users click on an image or video on the social media to full screen and then return it back to normal, an issue with the Facebook app for iOS slightly shifts the app to the right.

It opens a space on the left from where users can see the iPhone's camera activated in the background.

However, at this moment, it's not clear if it's just a UI bug where Facebook app incorrectly but only accesses the camera interface, or if it also records or uploads something, which, if proven right, would be the most disastrous moment in Facebook's history.

The issue immediately got the attention of other Facebook users, many of them tried reproducing the issue but failed, which likely suggests the buggy software update has not been rolled out to everyone worldwide and might affect a fraction of Facebook users only.

The Tricksgum was also not independently able to reproduce the bug and, thus, can not verify the authenticity, extent and severity of the issue.

Joshua Maddux, one of the users who discovered this bug, claimed that he tested and was able to replicate it on at least 5 different iPhones running iOS 13.2.2, which is the latest iOS version.

"I will note that iPhones running iOS 12 don't show the camera but not to say that it's not being used," Maddux said.

Some users also tested the issue after revoking camera permissions from Facebook, and they found that the background space was just a black screen in that case.

Since none of the Android users has yet noticed or complained about a similar flaw in Facebook, it seems like the bug only affects some Facebook for iOS users.

The news came less than a week after Facebook admitted that roughly 100 app developers might have improperly accessed its users' data in certain Facebook groups, including their names and profile pictures.

We've reached out to Facebook for more information, and if we hear back from them, we'll update this post.