{"id":6209,"date":"2019-04-01T20:59:19","date_gmt":"2019-04-02T00:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=6209"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:52:26","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:52:26","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-2","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-2\/","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\nshowing a glaring\nbug<\/a>\nwith Apple\u2019s FaceTime feature that allowed the caller to hear conversations and\neven see video from the person being called before\nthat person accepted or rejected the call<\/a>. The bug appears\nto only appear during group chats (chats with more than 2 people), but this\nhasn\u2019t stopped people from disabling\nFaceTime entirely<\/a>. In response to the bug, Eva Galperin,\ndirector of cybersecurity at Electric\nFrontier Foundation<\/a>, a leading international non-profit\ndedicated to digital privacy rights, brazenly wrote<\/a>\n\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 itself as being pro-privacy<\/a>, this accident has left consumers wondering whether that pro-privacy stance is truly genuine<\/a>. These concerns were exacerbated by the fact that media outlets recently began reporting that Grant Thompson, a 14-year-old out of Tucson, Arizona<\/a> had noticed the bug more than a week before the issue became public. Thompson told his mother, a licensed attorney, about the issue and she reportedly<\/a> \u201ctried everything she could think of to get Apple\u2019s attention,\u201d including emailing, calling, and tweeting<\/a> at Apple\u2019s CEO Tim Cook, and even faxing a letter on her law firm\u2019s letterhead. \u00a0<\/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\nleak of celebrities\u2019 private iCloud photos<\/a>, some consumers\nhad also recently been growing increasingly paranoid<\/a>\nabout receiving advertisements for products related to something they had been\ntalking about out loud when the phone was in the room, even when the phone was\nnot in use at the time. This sparked huge concern that Apple was listening in\nto consumers and selling 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>\nare because of various encryptions, the possibilities\nwith this technology are endless. The ads could be set to be displayed only if\nspecific trigger words are said a certain amount of times within a certain\nperiod of days, or perhaps only if they are said in combination with other trigger\nwords. Another expert explained that this listening in might happen but that\n\u201ccompanies know so much about you already, they probably don\u2019t need to\neavesdrop.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n

In\na meeting with Congressmen<\/a>, Apple specifically denied using\nthese 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\nthe end of the week<\/a>, but\nthis has not stopped lawsuits and government investigations from ensuing. An\nopportunistic attorney from Houston, Larry Williams II, filed\nsuit<\/a>\nfor negligence, product liability, misrepresentation, and breach of warranty against\nApple, claiming that the FaceTime bug allowed an unknown person to eavesdrop on\nhis private conversation with a client. Williams is seeking compensatory and\npunitive damages against Apple and claims that Apple failed to notify users of\nthe risks of using FaceTime and responded slowly to the risk, a sentiment expressed\nby other commenters as well<\/a>. Furthermore, Letitia James, the\nAttorney General of New York, announced<\/a>\nthat her office would be opening an investigation into the FaceTime bug citing\nthat the \u201cFaceTime breach is a serious threat to the security and privacy of\nthe millions of New Yorkers who have put their trust in Apple and its products\nover the years.\u201d\nIt is unclear how\nlawsuits against Apple or New York\u2019s investigation will turn out; however, what\ncan definitely be said is that trust in Apple has slowly been eroding as privacy\nconcerns continue to fill the news. Likely, the last thing Apple wants is to\nhave its reputation anywhere near Facebook who has been the subject of numerous\nprivacy hearings and investigations<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n\n\n

Sebastian Brana, 31 February 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":6210,"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\/6209"}],"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=6209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6836,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6209\/revisions\/6836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}