Apple to finally pay teen who discovered FaceTime eavesdropping bug

Apple has announced that it will pay an undisclosed sum to the Arizona teenager who discovered a major security flaw in the company’s FaceTime video calling app. The company has come under fire for its delayed response.

The tech giant was forced to temporarily disable the group chat function while it scrambled to find a fix to an eavesdropping bug originally discovered by 14-year-old Grant Thompson of Tucson, Arizona.

Thompson figured out that he could essentially force a call to connect to a selected device by simply attempting to Group FaceTime call another person before the first had answered.

His mother Michele reportedly used every possible method to contact the company and flag the issue, which ultimately took her a full week, highlighting a lack of accountability when it comes to consumer issues, particularly when they involve egregious lapses in security.

Now, Apple has finally credited Thompson and Daven Morris from Arlington, Texas in the patch notes to its latest update.

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A spokesperson told Reuters that the company is already working on improving its reporting processes to make it more accessible to the public having already “conducted a thorough security audit of the FaceTime service.”

The damage may already have been done, however, as the company is already facing lawsuits over the FaceTime bug as well as an upcoming grilling by concerned lawmakers.

Two leading Democrats from the House of Representatives questioned CEO Tim Cook Tuesday over the delay in both responding to the query from Michele Thompson and the time it took to rectify the issue.

To add insult to injury, Apple is embroiled in another wide-ranging security breach involving iOS apps that can surreptitiously record a user’s screen without their knowledge or consent, contrary to the company’s terms of service. The firm has already been forced to block certain apps from other tech giants for breaching its App Store terms of service.

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