The year has not started on a very good note for Apple. Earlier this week, reports about an iPhone bug that lets other users hear into FaceTime conversations surfaced online, and now, Apple is being taken to court for the same reason.
Cupertino based technology giant Apple has been sued by a Houston-based lawyer who claims that his iPhone inadvertently enabled a third person to eavesdrop on a private conversation that he was having a client.
The smartphone giant has come under fire for a bug that has been found in its iOS 12.1 software that lets people listen to other people’s conversations during live video group chats using FaceTime.
The report about Apple being sued by the Houston lawyer first surfaced in Bloomberg. According to the report, attorney Larry Williams II has filed a complaint in a state court in Houston that says that the bug in iPhone intrudes on the privacy of “one’s most intimate conversations without consent.”
He also reportedly said that his conversation was eavesdropped on while he was taking sworn testimony during a client deposition.
Williams has made claims of negligence, product liability, misrepresentation and warranty breach and is now seeking unspecified punitive damages. Media has reportedly tried to contact Apple for a comment on this, however, the Cupertino-based technology company has not responded yet.
We should mention that the bug in iPhone enabled a user to call a contact via FaceTime and immediately begin hearing the conversation, even before the other person picked up their call. However, the person whose call was being heard was not aware of this.
Ideally, a person should only be able to hear a conversation in case of a conference call. However, this wasn’t what was happening in Apple’s case. Furthermore, the bug also sent the video to be sent to the third person in case the user clicked his iPhone’s power or volume rocker buttons.
Apple has weakened the issue on Monday by disabling the multi-person FaceTime option on iPhones. The company has also said that it will soon be releasing a software update to get the issue fixed.
According to Bloomberg’s report, the case is Williams v Apple Inc., 2019-06645, 133 Judicial District Court, Harris County, Texas (Houston).
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