New York Governor Andrew Cuomo blasted Apple for an “egregious” privacy breach Tuesday. It came after a major security flaw with Group FaceTime was revealed.
Putting ‘New Yorkers at Risk’
Responding to reports that users can turn on a Group FaceTime call recipient’s iPhone mic without them knowing, Governor Cuomo said:
“[The] FaceTime bug is an egregious breach of privacy that puts New Yorkers at risk.”
The flaw could be “exploited for unscrupulous purposes,” the New York Governor added (via Bloomberg News). He also advised people in his state to disable FaceTime until the issue is resolved (via New York Post).
Apple took the Group FaceTime service offline Tuesday when the full extent of the issue emerged. At the time of this writing, GroupTime FaceTime remained unavailable, per the company’s system status website.
The “breach” while potentially serious, does not require disabling the feature — Apple has already disabled Group FaceTime and is issuing a fix this week. Andrew Cuomo is my governor, and I support him in general, but his response is a bit overblown, in my opinion.
Just how many people used this feature? The ones who air a lot of laundry?