Apps could be secretly accessing your smartphone’s microphone and camera to spy on you, or collect data to serve you targeted ads.
If you’ve used Zoom at all over the last six months, you’re certainly familiar with that pop-up box that requests permission to use your device’s microphone or camera. How else are you supposed to see or hear the people on the other end?
But there can be a more sinister side to these permissions: Some apps don’t bother asking for your consent at all, turning your device into a pocket spy, loaded with cameras and microphones at the ready.
Back in 2018, for example, over 250 apps across the App Store and Google Play market were listening in for background audio through smartphone microphones, allowing the apps to figure out what you watch or listen to in order to serve up better-targeted advertisements. And then, of course, there’s the long-standing conspiracy theory that our smartphones are actively eavesdropping on us.
The good news: You can take a few simple precautions to always maintain your privacy and ward off any watchful apps. The following steps just take a few seconds to complete.
Follow these simple steps to protect your privacy.
Figure out which apps already have permission to use your camera and microphone.
This is a pretty quick exercise in personal security, and it might actually surprise you. For example, when I checked out which apps have permission to use the microphone on my iPhone 11, I found 6 entries for which I can see the reason even though I’ve never used them via voice commands.
When I checked which apps had permission to use my camera I found a slightly different story: There were a few 2fa (2-factor authentication) applications that had access in order to set the apps up but there were also some apps that I would probably never use my camera for: CVS, BJ’s, a Digital book to name a few. Your findings will be different for sure.
To figure out which apps have permission to use your microphone or camera:
ON ANDROID:
Settings > Apps & Notifications > Scroll down and click Advanced > Permission Manager > Select which settings you’d like to examine, from call logs, to camera permissions, to microphone permissions > Once you’re under a category, you can click on any of the apps to toggle the permission to Allow or Deny.
ON iOS:
Settings > Privacy > select Microphone or Camera, depending on which you’d like check up on > toggle permission on/off for certain apps.
To be clear, I’m not saying the apps I found are inherently malicious—just that they’re asking for permission to use tools that can gather and potentially store the my data. We should all be wary of these things. When going through your list of apps that have permission to the microphone or camera, ask yourself a few basic questions:
1: Do I actually record or post videos or images with this app? What about listening to playback audio or recording audio? If none of these things apply, don’t give the app access to the camera or microphone.
2: Can I wait to turn permissions on until I need them? If it’s your native camera app, you’ll probably want permissions turned on at all times so you never miss that once-in-a-lifetime shot. But if it’s something like WhatsApp or Exxon/Mobil, consider turning off all permissions to the camera until you actually need it.
3: Most Importantly: Do I know how the app developer will use any data collected through my microphone or camera? Read the app’s privacy policy and terms of service, and you may be surprised at what you find. One recent example, TikTok has recently come under fire for collecting massive amounts of user data, even though the app does list all of its data collection policies in its privacy notice.
As a smart phone end-user, it is ultimately our responsibility to control what the apps we download actually have access to as well as what they can do with the data they collect.
