{"id":6013,"date":"2019-02-04T14:39:37","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T14:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=6013"},"modified":"2020-10-15T14:29:26","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T14:29:26","slug":"is-apple-truly-as-pro-privacy-as-they-suggest-evidence-of-listening-in-and-a-recent-major-facetime-bug-put-apples-public-stance-in-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/is-apple-truly-as-pro-privacy-as-they-suggest-evidence-of-listening-in-and-a-recent-major-facetime-bug-put-apples-public-stance-in-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Apple Truly as Pro-Privacy as they Suggest? Evidence of Listening in and a Recent Major Facetime Bug Put Apple\u2019s Public Stance in Question"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Apple faced public scrutiny when viral videos surfaced showing a glaring bug<\/a> with Apple\u2019s FaceTime feature that allowed the caller to hear conversations and even see video from the person being called before that person accepted or rejected the call<\/a>. The bug appears to only appear during group chats (chats with more than 2 people), but this hasn\u2019t stopped people from disabling FaceTime entirely<\/a>. In response to the bug, Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at Electric Frontier Foundation<\/a>, a leading international non-profit dedicated to digital privacy rights, brazenly wrote<\/a> \u201cThrow your iPhone into the sea.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n

…this FaceTime bug follows the recent trend of not-so-privacy-conscious news stories related to Apple products.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

Given that Apple frequently touts\nitself as being pro-privacy<\/a>, this accident has left consumers\nwondering whether that pro-privacy stance is truly genuine<\/a>.\nThese concerns were exacerbated by the fact that media outlets recently began\nreporting that Grant Thompson, a 14-year-old\nout of Tucson, Arizona<\/a> had noticed the bug more than a week before\nthe issue became public. Thompson told his mother, a licensed attorney, about\nthe issue and she reportedly<\/a>\n\u201ctried everything she could think of to get Apple\u2019s attention,\u201d including\nemailing, calling, and tweeting<\/a>\nat Apple\u2019s CEO Tim Cook, and even faxing a letter on her law firm\u2019s letterhead.\n <\/p>\n\n\n

Importantly, this FaceTime bug follows the recent\ntrend of not-so-privacy-conscious news stories related to Apple products. Along\nwith a 2014 leak\nof celebrities\u2019 private iCloud photos<\/a>, some consumers\nhad also recently been growing increasingly paranoid<\/a> about receiving\nadvertisements for products related to something they had been talking about out\nloud when the phone was in the room, even when the phone was not in use at the\ntime. This sparked huge concern that Apple was listening in to consumers and\nselling their information to third-party advertisers. <\/p>\n\n\n

Sandy Parakilas, a former operations manager for\nFacebook, has said<\/a>\nthat he thinks large companies listening in to non-phone conversations is \u201cvery\nvery unlikely\u201d because collecting data constantly from iPhones would be too\nexpensive. However, another cybersecurity expert explained<\/a>\nthat because the iPhone\u2019s microphone, loaded with AI assistants, necessarily\nhas to be able to be triggered by vocal commands like \u201cHey Siri,\u201d the iPhone is\nconstantly listening for those designated \u201ctrigger words.\u201d This mechanism could\njust as easily allow Apple to listen in for trigger words that relate to\nproducts that certain advertisers request. Did the consumer mention the word\n\u201ccold\u201d or \u201cheater\u201d? Then perhaps that person will receive an ad from a heating\nrepair company that Apple has contracted with. Similarly, a person mentioning\n\u201cDisney World,\u201d \u201cMiami,\u201d or the word \u201cvacation,\u201d a certain number of times\ncould just as easily trigger an ad from a travel agency or airline. Although it\nis difficult\nto discover exactly what the trigger words<\/a> are because of various\nencryptions, the possibilities with this technology are endless. The ads could\nbe set to be displayed only if specific trigger words are said a certain amount\nof times within a certain period of days, or perhaps only if they are said in\ncombination with other trigger words. Another expert explained that this\nlistening in might happen but that \u201ccompanies know so much about you already,\nthey probably don\u2019t need to eavesdrop.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n

In\na meeting with Congressmen<\/a>, Apple specifically denied\nusing these trigger words to listen in to its customers, but did admit<\/a>,\n\u201cApple does not and cannot monitor what [third-party app] developers do with\nthe customer data they have collected, or prevent the onward transfer of that\ndata, nor do we have the ability to ensure a developer\u2019s compliance with their\nown privacy policies or local law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

Apple has said that they will fix the FaceTime bug by the end of the week<\/a>, but this has not stopped lawsuits and government investigations from ensuing. An opportunistic attorney from Houston, Larry Williams II, filed suit<\/a> for negligence, product liability, misrepresentation, and breach of warranty against Apple, claiming that the FaceTime bug allowed an unknown person to eavesdrop on his private conversation with a client. Williams is seeking compensatory and punitive damages against Apple and claims that Apple failed to notify users of the risks of using FaceTime and responded slowly to the risk, a sentiment expressed by other commenters as well<\/a>. Furthermore, Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, announced<\/a> that her office would be opening an investigation into the FaceTime bug citing that the \u201cFaceTime breach is a serious threat to the security and privacy of the millions of New Yorkers who have put their trust in Apple and its products over the years.\u201d It is unclear how lawsuits against Apple or New York\u2019s investigation will turn out; however, what can definitely be said is that trust in Apple has slowly been eroding as privacy concerns continue to fill the news. Likely, the last thing Apple wants is to have its reputation anywhere near Facebook who has been the subject of numerous privacy hearings and investigations<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n

Sebastian Brana, 28 January 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple faced public scrutiny when viral videos surfaced showing a glaring bug with Apple\u2019s FaceTime feature that allowed the caller to hear conversations and even see video from the person being called before that person accepted or rejected the call. The bug appears to only appear during group chats (chats with more than 2 people), …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6017,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6870,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013\/revisions\/6870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}