Ever Wondered What Those Little Dots at the Top of Your iPhone Screen Are? Apple’s Very Subtle Privacy Icons, Revealed
You might have noticed small coloured dots appear at the top of your iPhone screen close to the front-facing camera lens – but few people know what they mean. Newer iPhone models have built-in warning signals for when your privacy is being invaded – and these dots can give users a heads-up that their online safety could be at risk.
There are three main coloured ‘dots’, also known as Apple status bar icons, that appear at the top of the phone’s screen. The orange ‘dot,’ which can also appear yellow, means that your device’s microphone is currently in use. A green dot, the same size and shape as the orange one, means your camera is currently in use by an app.
That is not to be confused with a blue dot that can appear alongside apps on your phone’s home screen. It simply means an app has been recently updated and is nothing to be concerned about.
There is only cause for concern at the appearance of one of these dots if you are not expecting an app to be using your camera, microphone or location services. You can check which of your apps is utilizing these features by going into the phone’s Control Center and checking the dots icon at the top.
This should reveal which apps are using your microphone, camera or location. You can also go into Settings and turn on the App Privacy Report to see a running log of which apps have been using your sensitive ‘permissions’ and when. It is also important to check your iPhone’s safety features as sources recently reported facial recognition can leave your data and privacy vulnerable.
Hackers could unlock your phone without your knowledge when you’re sleeping by simply holding the device up for the facial recognition software to gain access. But, They fool your iPhone’s facial recognition, granting them unrestricted access to your texts, photos, videos, social media accounts, banking and more.
Facial recognition systems don’t typically work if your eyes are closed. But this safeguard can be bypassed if a victim is wearing glasses. It is therefore important to check your settings to ensure to ‘Face ID & Attention feature is enabled. That will require your eyes to be open for facial recognition software to work.
Apple also recently deployed a new update to help fix a problem that made devices vulnerable to hacks. Apple has deployed iOS 16.4.1 to all compatible handsets, including the iPhone 8 and newer models. The update fixes two vulnerabilities that appeared within the previous software, iOS 16.4, which was released at the end of March.
Both the security flaws could have allowed hackers to infiltrate the device and ‘execute arbitrary code’, according to Apple. This means they could run any code they wanted on a targeted device without the owner’s knowledge.
This code could give them access to private data, let them gain control over the device’s functionality and allow them to install malware. It could even allow them to gain control of other devices connected to the network, or internet, that the original was connected to.
