The FaceTime bug that made waves as result of 9to5Mac’s coverage last week was actually first reported to Apple by Grant Thompson and his mother in Arizona a week earlier. However, deficiencies in the Apple bug reporting process meant that the report was not acted upon by the company …
Apple has today released an update on the FaceTime eavesdropping bug and offered an apology. The company says it has patched the flaw on its servers and will roll out an update to iOS users next week to bring back Group FaceTime with the bug fixed. It also makes a promise to improve how it handles bug reports and its escalation process.
Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) – the UK equivalent of the NSA – is calling on Apple and other tech companies to secretly add law enforcement agents to Messages chats, FaceTime calls and other forms of encrypted chat on demand.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has said this would be like the recently-discovered FaceTime bug, only worse …
While we’re waiting on Apple’s fix for the Group FaceTime bug, the New York State Attorney General announced today that it is launching an investigation into Apple’s “slow response.” This comes after allegations that Apple was first alerted to the eavesdropping flaw earlier this month.
Apple is being hit with its first lawsuit over the FaceTime eavesdropping bug that we first reported on yesterday. As reported by Bloomberg, a Houston, Texas-based lawyer is suing Apple, alleging that the FaceTime flaw allowed an unknown person to listen in on a private conversation with a client.
More details surrounding the major FaceTime eavesdropping bug that 9to5Mac exclusively reported on yesterday are emerging. A woman has claimed that her teenage son discovered the flaw and warned Apple about it last week. Now a video has surfaced as evidence for the teenager’s discovery dated January 23rd.
The revelation that a major FaceTime bug can effectively turn your Apple devices into a hot mic, allowing a caller to hear or even see you before you pick up, would be a massive embarrassment no matter which company was involved. It’s an absolutely crazy security fail.
But when that company is Apple – which has been ceaselessly pushing privacy of late – it becomes so cringeworthy we’re going to have to invent a whole new scale just to measure it …
Following the exposure of a major FaceTime security hole earlier today, Apple has now taken Group FaceTime completely offline. This comes after the company said a fix for the FaceTime calling bug is coming “later this week,” but failed to address specifics.
UPDATE: Apple has taken Group FaceTime offline in an attempt to address the issue in the interim.
A significant bug has been discovered in FaceTime and is currently spreading virally over social media. The bug lets you call anyone with FaceTime, and immediately hear the audio coming from their phone — before the person on the other end has accepted or rejected the incoming call. Apple says the issue will be addressed in a software update “later this week”.
Naturally, this poses a pretty big privacy problem as you can essentially listen in on any iOS user, although it still rings like normal, so you can’t be 100% covert about it. Nevertheless, there is no indication on the recipient’s side that you could hear any of their audio. There’s a second part to this which can expose video too …
In iOS 12.1.1, currently in beta, Apple has restored the FaceTime Live Photo capture feature that was removed in iOS 12.0. They have also dramatically improved the FaceTime UI, bringing mute and flip camera actions to the main view — no longer hidden in the submenu.
The Live Photos feature returns, but both devices must be updated to use it. The expanded card view in FaceTime has also been improved. More screenshots below …
This is a disappointing development: Group FaceTime for iPhone, iPad, and Mac appears to be delayed and won’t be ready in time for iOS 12 and macOS Mojave launch next month. Group FaceTime expands video calling from one-on-one calls to up to 32 participants, but customers will have to wait a little longer to use it this fall.
Due to local regulatory rules, FaceTime is blocked on iPhone and iPad devices sold in UAE countries including Abu Dhabi and Dubai. This has been the case for many years. Obviously, the appeal of Apple’s ecosystem is stunted when features like FaceTime are unavailable.
There are promising signs that, soon, the ban will be lifted. Apple is in active negotiations with the United Arab Emirates federal government to permit the use of internet video-chat services on its devices, enabling FaceTime to be unlocked for Apple customers.
A private tutor hatched an elaborate plan involving FaceTime and skin-colored Bluetooth earpieces to help Chinese students cheat at English, math, physics and chemistry exams …
Just a week after the Apple Watch aided a mother and son who were involved in a car accident, FaceTime is being credited with helping save a woman’s life. As reported by the BBC, a woman was on FaceTime with her sister when she suffered from a stroke…
Earlier this year Apple was hit with a class action lawsuit over FaceTime being disabled on older iPhones that can’t run iOS 7, and this week an attempt to have the lawsuit dismissed has failed. Reuters reports that U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh made the decision not to dismiss the lawsuit…
iPads have been used by doctors for many years now, but Apple reportedly has ambitions for the tablet to be placed into the hands of every hospital patient.
iPads are already being made available to patients in a number of U.S. hospitals in a program intended to give them direct access to their own medical records …
I’m a huge fan of Apple’s Continuity features. Being able to start writing something on one device and continue it on another is fantastic. Pasting between devices is really handy. Being able to answer a phone call on my Mac is often more convenient than doing so on my phone when I’m working. And so on.
The ability to focus on the task I want to achieve, rather than the device I want to use, is a very nice illustration of the benefit of working within a single ecosystem.
But there’s one thing Apple appears to have forgotten, and that’s a quick, easy and reliable method to switch FaceTime calls between devices …
Apple has been hit with another class action lawsuit in California. This one alleges that the company forced users to upgrade to iOS 7 by essentially breaking FaceTime in iOS 6. The move to render FaceTime useless in iOS 6, according to the lawsuit, was primarily driven by Apple wanting to avoid paying increasingly high data costs to Akamai.
Today’s suit alleges, however, that the forced upgrade to use FaceTime rendered older devices like iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S unusable.
iOS 11 may finally deliver a highly requested FaceTime feature, according to a new rumor. The Verifier which is a technology blog out of Israel claims Apple is planning to include group video calling for FaceTime starting with iOS 11 later this year.
The report cites “several people familiar with [the] iOS development process (partly developed in Israel)” although the rumor has not been verified or floated elsewhere. The site claims Apple will update Messages on iOS to let users start a group FaceTime call with up to five members at a time.
With FaceTime, Skype, Facebook Messenger and more, you might not think there’s much room left for yet another video chat app, but Google believes there is. The company is today launching Duo, with iOS and Android apps.
Back in February an East Texas court ruled that Apple must pay more than $625 million in damages to VirnetX over patent infringement related to iMessage and FaceTime. The patent case was especially notable for being one of the highest amounts rewarded in history, but the plaintiff in the case wasn’t satisfied and asked for $190 million more in damages four months later. But for now it’s back to the step one for Apple and VirnetX in this case as a federal judge has decided the case must be revisited…
Infamous patent troll VirnetX has formally asked a Texas court this week to order Apple to stop providing its FaceTime and iMessage features to customers. The request follows VirnetX’s victory in court earlier this year to the tune of $625 million, which the firm wants to see increased by $190 million or more, Law360 reports:
Apple earlier this week released the public stable version of OS X 10.11.4, but for a number of users the update process has been less than pleasant. A plethora of users are voicing issues on Apple’s support forums centered around logging in to iMessage and FaceTime following the update to OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan.
Attempts by states like California and New York to ban the sale of encrypted phones could be overruled by federal law. The Verge reports that a cross-party bill is being introduced today in Congress by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX).
The ENCRYPT Act of 2016, or by its longer name, the Ensuring National Constitutional Rights of Your Private Telecommunications Act, would preempt state and local government encryption laws. The two men said today they are “deeply concerned” that varying bills surrounding encryption would endanger the country as well as the competitiveness of American companies. The argument is that it wouldn’t be easy or even feasible to tailor phone encryption capabilities for specific states.
New York last month kicked off the attempt to ban the sale of encrypted phones in the state unless the manufacturer built in a back door, with a virtually identical bill proposed in California later the same month. The moves – which would effectively outlaw the sale of current iPhones in both states – followed similar proposals in the UK last year …