The use of this type of application is not without risk. There are always privacy concerns with every application we install on the phone, lest it hides malware or spyware that allows infiltration of your private data and information, so what if this application also has access to the phone's camera and microphone? Can you detect if someone is spying on you? Are there ways available to protect the phone's camera and microphone from hacking? We answer all these questions in the following lines.
Detect running apps for the camera or microphone
Despite the suspicion and skepticism that the advertisements that appear on our smartphones often arouse in us, which announce things that we have previously talked about in our phone conversations or in our normal daily conversations, most companies working in the field of cybersecurity technologies deny the possibility of advertisers resorting to Spying on the target audience of ads using cameras and microphones of their smartphones to know their interests, due to the difficulty of extracting important and valuable information from tons of daily conversations and calls made by millions of people. We have previously explained this issue in detail in the topic " Do our smartphones eavesdrop on our conversations? " I recommend that you review it.But it's just that those advertisers have more effective means of analyzing data and examining the user's activity records and search engines, which helps them guess his interests. Thus, the possibility that some applications will illegally use the cameras and microphones of mobile phones without the knowledge of users to serve the objectives of advertisers remains very small .
As for the real source of concern, it lies in the possibility that one of the parties, or one of the snoopers or electronic attackers, will infiltrate the phone and hack the camera and microphone in order to be able to control them remotely in order to monitor the targeted persons, and exploit this in an illegal framework in extortion, theft, fraud and other things. like that.
Therefore, phone manufacturers have worked over the past years to raise the levels of security and privacy for their users by adding some signs or indicators through which the user can know that a phone application is running the phone’s camera or microphone at the present time, and this has made things a little more difficult for snoopers. It is difficult for the operations of imaging or recording devices to pass without being discovered by the real owner of the phone.
Here are the most common signs and indicators that indicate if an app is using the phone's camera/microphone:
Bright dots in the status bar
iPhones starting with iOS 14 and later, for example, have a dot or indicators in the status bar at the top of the screen that glow orange if an app is currently turning on the phone's microphone, and another dot next to it Lights up green if there is an app running the phone's camera or microphone and camera at the moment. However, if you notice orange and green indicators appearing in the status bar, bring up the Control Center to see which app was or is still using the camera or microphone.
Icons in the status bar
Starting with Android phones running Android 12 or later versions of the operating system, the microphone icon or the camera icon will appear on the right side of the status bar at the top of the screen as soon as an application installed on the phone turns on the camera or microphone, and soon A green dot also appears in the same position as these icons to clearly indicate that a photocopy or audio recording is taking place.It is possible to check whether your phone provides the advantages of the previous visual tags that distinguish the operation of the camera and microphone or not, and test them if any, whether in the case of iPhone phones or Android phones, by making an audio call or a video call using a video calling application such as the Facebook Messenger application or WhatsApp Noting whether or not the signs that we mentioned appear in the status bar during a call, bearing in mind that these signs do not appear in the case of regular phone calls.
However, few professional cyberattackers have very sophisticated means to turn off these features and prevent detection when spying on their victims. Therefore, in the following paragraph, we detail the most important measures required to protect against penetration of the phone's camera and microphone.
Protect the phone's camera and microphone from hacking
The capabilities required for a hacker to be able to disable the feature of the appearance of bright dots and icons indicating the operation of the camera and microphone in the status bar of the phone are complex and are available only to a limited number of cyber attackers, so you do not have to worry that these features will be turned off on your phone without your knowledge Unless it is a valuable catch and a very important target for hardened cyber attackers who focus their efforts in most cases to hack the devices of public figures, senior officials, or major companies and economic institutions. In any case, the cyber attacker only needs to take advantage of a mistake you make yourself in order to gain access to your device and turn on the camera or microphone.Prevention is better than cure in most cases , and if you're still concerned about your phone's camera or microphone turning on, there are steps you can take to prevent this from happening. The following are the most important procedures that must be followed to protect against penetration of the phone’s camera and microphone:
Be sure to install applications from trusted sources , and avoid downloading and installing games of unknown origin or files sent from suspicious websites and addresses.
Try to reduce the applications for voice chats and video calls on your phone as much as possible to reduce the chances of hacking the phone's camera and microphone or turning it on without your knowledge.
Be careful not to give permission to any app to use your phone's camera and microphone unless it's an essential part of the work being done by the app whose installation is also necessary.
Some websites and applications for voice and video calls, such as Zoom, Skype and Google Hangout applications, for example, allow calls to be made by logging into your account on the site and using it via a web browser without the need to install any applications or programs that require granting any permissions on your phone. Using this type of service through a web browser is somewhat safer than downloading and installing custom applications on the phone, which in most cases requires that the application be allowed to access the phone’s camera and microphone at any time, and the use of secure and highly reliable web browsers such as Google is also taken into account. Chrome, Safari and Firefox.
Be sure to close apps that use your camera or microphone that you launched yourself, once you're done using them.
Be sure to install security updates , and activate the automatic update of system programs and files, which are offered by the company that developed the phone's operating system to treat and fix problems and fill security gaps in programs as soon as they are discovered.
Strong protection and antivirus software can be used, but care should be taken to purchase and install them from trusted sources.
Check from time to time the list of permissions to see which apps you previously granted permission to access your phone's camera and microphone, and revoke unnecessary or no longer needed permissions. These permissions can be accessed and controlled on iPhone phones by opening “Settings” and then going to the “Privacy & Security” section, then click on “Camera” and then select the application for which you want to revoke permission to use the camera and press the corresponding toggle button To disable it, then we go back to the “Privacy” menu, and this time we click on the “Microphone” option, and we repeat the step of selecting the application to be prevented from using the microphone, and we press the toggle button next to it to disable it.
The steps are not much different in the case of Android phones, so all we have to do to revoke unwanted permissions is open the Settings app, go to “Applications”, then click on the “Manage Applications” option, and go to the “Permissions” section that appears at the top of the list of applications in the upper part of the screen, or press the menu button ( ⁝ ) to display the “Manage Permissions” option. On the next page, go to the “Camera” option, then click on the name of the application for which you want to revoke the permission to use the camera, and select the “Do not allow” option, then return to the “Permissions” list, and this time click on the “Microphone” option, and repeat The step of clicking on the name of the application to be prevented from using the microphone, then we select the "Do not allow" option.
If your phone allows it, temporarily disable the camera and microphone so that you only use them when you need to. Samsung phones allow this feature.
There are various additional ways to prevent a phone's camera or microphone from becoming a hidden, portable spy tool in your phone, such as covering the camera with masking tape or opaque material, or purchasing dedicated mutes that fit into headphones to prevent the microphone from being turned on whenever we want it to, but although While these solutions may work for laptops or tablets, they seem a bit unwieldy and inconvenient for mobile phones, forcing you to remove the tape or remove the silencer when you need to make a phone call or take a picture with your phone's camera, not to mention The effect left by the adhesive tape residue on the camera lenses, which reduces its efficiency.