Technology
How to stop your iPhone apps from secretly listening to you
IS your iPhone secretly listening to you? Probably not, but there’s a great way to make sure.
Your iPhone has loads of features to prevent any apps surreptitiously recording your conversations.
AppleLook for this dot in the top corner to see if an app is using your camera or microphone[/caption]
We’ve all panicked that an app might be spying on us from time to time.
Thankfully, Apple has built special privacy features into the iPhone.
This means you can shut off microphone access to specific apps at the highest level.
Importantly, apps will now have had to ask you to use your microphone.
But you might already have given permission to some apps – and now want to revoke it.
To do this, open Settings and then go into Privacy.
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Then scroll down and tap Microphone.
From here, you’ll be able to see all of the apps that you’ve given microphone access to.
You can choose any of these apps and toggle microphone access off.
This means the apps will be totally unable to access your microphone – and therefore couldn’t ever “listen in” to you.
It’s worth also doing the same for apps under Camera as well as Microphone.
Bear in mind that this may limit access to certain features that rely on microphone or camera usage.
But you can always toggle those permissions back on if you need them.
Your iPhone will also warn you if someone is listening in.
The latest iPhone update adds a new “warning dot” that alerts you whenever your microphone or camera is activated.
In iOS 14, a green dot will appear in the upper right corner of the screen when the cameras activated.
And it’s orange if the microphone was activated.
If some of these features aren’t available to you, don’t panic.
It probably means you haven’t updated to the latest iOS version.
To do this, just go to Settings > General > Software Update.
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