Apple has drawn a lot of ire from customers lately as they speculated that Apple was turning its iPhones into spying devices. It was a bug in the FaceTime group chat feature that was later held accountable for the same. The bug was feared to have infected the devices and it was later spotted by a teen from Arizona, United States. The undergraduate boy from Tucsan received a whopping amount from Apple as a reward for spotting the problem. The 14-year-old Grant Thompson will also receive money from Apple to support his future education. Apple previously announced to offer bounties up to $200,000 to people that discover serious technological problems.
In the Apple’s security updates announcement, Apple has also credited the freshman from Catalina Foothills High School along with Deven Morris from Texas. Michele Thompson, an elated mother of Grant told to USA Today through a text message, “We want to thank Apple for giving credit to Grant in the security update, meeting with us…and awarding Grant for his discovery.” She further added, ” We intend to use any money received towards future college expenses”.
Here’s how Grant has found the glitch:
When Grant was preparing to play the popular videogame ‘Fortnite’, he attempted to start a FaceTime group chat with his friend. While trying to call his friend, Thompson noticed that even though the FaceTime call was still ringing and his friend was unable to answer it, the phone kept transmitting audio to his friend’s phone the entire time.
In the meanwhile, his friend in the other side was shocked to hear Thompson’s voice ask ‘What’s up?’despite him not answering it!
“All three of us (friends) spent the next half n hour testing to see if it really was a glitch or just some accident”, Thompson said.
Thompson and his sister replicated this problem in front of their mother and became assured of the glitch. Michele Thompson said, “I took it seriously because I realised there were some major security implications.” Michele, an Attorney, successively tried to contact Apple to tell them about the security issue but to no avail.
But then, hell bent to make a buzz, Michele called Apple customer care support, tagged Apple in Facebook posts, sent tweets, registered as a developer to submit a warning through Apple’s bug reporting website, and finally faxed a letter on her law firm’s letterhead to Apple general counsel.
Apple finally became aware when the industry news site 9toMac reported the glitch. The company said that they temporarily disabled the group-chat function in FaceTime and would install a software update to fix the safety issue.
Apple immediately met the family and thanked them for finding out the problem. The Thompsons revealed that they will continue to use Apple devices, this time more cautiously.
How you can fix the problem in your own device:
Experts say that to fix the problem in their own phones, Apple customers have to install the 12.1.4 security update on their iPhone, iPad or iMac soon. To do this, you will have to go to Settings>General>Software Update. Then choose Download and Install. During the continuation of the process, the battery of the phone has to be 50 percent or at least be plugged in. Apple was quoted as saying, “We sincerely apologise to our customers who were affected and all who were concerned about the security issue.”
