Facebook is being accused of accessing peoples’ cameras through Instagram, thanks to a iOS 14 feature that tells you when your camera is active.
Facebook denied the reports and blamed a bug, which it said it was correcting, for triggering what it described as false notifications that Instagram was accessing iPhone cameras.
In the complaint filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco, New Jersey Instagram user Brittany Conditi contends the app’s use of the camera is intentional and done for the purpose of collecting “lucrative and valuable data on its users that it would not otherwise have access to.”
Facebook: “It’s a bug because you weren’t supposed to know we were doing this.”
Andrew Orr and Jeff Butts join host Kelly Guimont to discuss Security Friday news and how to encrypt email on iOS devices.
Instagram will start asking “suspicious accounts” to verify their identity with a government ID. Instagram claims this will help users understand when accounts are “attempting to mislead their followers” although it’s not clear what kind of behavior the Facebook-owned company thinks is suspicious. One reason is shared: If most of your followers are in a different country than you.
IDs will be stored securely and deleted within 30 days once our review is completed, and won’t be shared on the person’s profile as pseudonymity is still an important part of Instagram.
Andrew Orr and Bryan Chaffin join host Kelly Guimont to discuss Security (read: Facebook) news, Apple Card id protection, and Fortnite. Extended edition brought to you by intellectual laziness.
Security researcher Saugat Pokharel found that Instagram didn’t delete his photos and messages from its servers, even though he deleted them.
Facebook-owned Instagram faces a lawsuit that accuses the company of illegally collects biometric data from users.
Instagram Reels is the app’s response to Tik Tok – allowing users to both create and discover short videos on the platform.
Instagram is rolling out and testing tools that will allow users to both remove negative comments and amplify positive ones.
Opera has added an Instagram sidebar allowing users to browse the photo-sharing network directly, without having to head to the web-version.
When asked why there isn’t an Instagram iPad app yet, CEO Adam Mosseri said the company would like to create one, “But we only have so many people, and lots to do, and it hasn’t bubbled up as the next best thing to do yet.”
Instagram users have been asking for an official iPad app nearly since the social network launched in 2010, the same year that the first iPad was released. Some alternatives include third-party Instagram apps for iPad, browsing Instagram on the web on iPad, or using the upscaled iPhone app on iPad.
The obvious answer is, “Hire more people because you’re owned by one of the richest corporations in the world: Facebook.” But I wonder what the actual answer is. Invasive tracking isn’t as lucrative on iPadOS?
Instagram has increased its attempts to counter fake news on the platform, taking its third-party fact-checking program global.
Please join us in taking the makers of 4K Stogram for sponsoring TMO here this week. 4K Stogram is an Instagram Viewer and Downloader for macOS that lets you. With it, you can download photos, videos, and stories from your friends’ public and private Instagram accounts, backup your Instagram profile and import your list of Instagram subscriptions. And best of all, you can get started for free.
Instagram announced (on Twitter, which has at least some level of meta-element) that it is expanding its test of hiding Like counts from public view globally.
Apple has removed a stalking app called Like Patrol from the App Store after Instagram sent a cease-and-desist order to the developers.
Jack Dorsey has rather gleefully mocked Facebook recently, but was right behind it the company’s experiment of not showing Instagram ‘Likes’.
Instagram announced a strengthening of the rules governing content relating to suicide and self-harm following the death of a British teen.
It is our pleasure to welcome Combin Scheduler as our sponsor here at TMO this week. It’s also our pleasure to have used Combin Scheduler to ensure we didn’t forget to post this week’s (fantastic) Mac Geek Gab episode image to our MGG Instagram feed.
Dark Mode has arrived for the photo-sharing app in iOS 13 to make late night browsing easier, along with a new camera design.
Some Instagram from Facebook users have noticed views on their Story from accounts that don’t follow them and seemed to be Russian. Instagram said it’s aware of the issue.
It also said this inauthentic activity is not related to misinformation campaigns but is rather a new growth hacking tactic — which involves accounts paying third parties to try to boost their profile via the medium of fake likes, followers and comments (in this case by generating inauthentic activity by watching the Instagram Stories of people they have no real interest in in the hopes that’ll help them pass off as real and net them more followers).
