Apple Disables Group FaceTime as Temporary Workaround to Major Privacy Bug
Apple appears to have disabled Group FaceTime on its server side as a temporary workaround for a major bug discovered today that allowed anyone who places a FaceTime call to listen to audio from the recipient without them answering the call. The bug even extended to video in some circumstances.
As spotted by Mark Gurman, Apple's system status page now says "Group FaceTime is temporarily unavailable" as of 7:16 p.m. Pacific Time.
As a result, it is no longer possible to add your personal phone number to a Group FaceTime call, which was the underlying cause of the bug. Multiple editors on our team have confirmed being unable to add a phone number to a FaceTime call. One-on-one FaceTime calls continue to work normally.
Apple has promised to release a software update that permanently addresses the bug "later this week," and given the serious privacy implications, the company likely has engineers working on the update as we speak.
Group FaceTime is limited to iOS 12.1 and later.
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Top Rated Comments
What would be shameful is rushing out a quick fix that solves this problem but possibly introduces other ones. Apple has taken the quickest possible step to protect users and now will fix the bug. They did this 100% the right way so far.