Conspiracy theories and false information are constantly circulating on social media, but they often reach many people. A relatively common one is that the iPhone secretly captures “infrared” images. TECHBOOK examines the truth of the claim.
A woman shared a video on the social media platform TikTok that purportedly showed the iPhone taking a photo with infrared light every five seconds. The video shows an infrared camera pointing at an iPhone with Face ID. The camera shows that the iPhone actually flashes a light every five seconds – even though the device is unlocked and only the home screen is visible.
No, the iPhone doesn’t take stealthy photos
However, the reason for this is not that the device secretly takes pictures. The iPhone uses it to check whether the user is looking at the screen or not. The scanning is for the “attention-sensitive functions”, which causes the iPhone to change its behavior in certain contexts. Examples of customized behavior when the infrared sensor detects a face: the screen does not dim, on the lock screen, notifications show information, and notifications appear at a lower volume.
To explain exactly how scanning works, we need to go into a little detail. A whole range of sensors are installed in the notch of the iPhone. These are primarily used for unlocking with Face ID. But they also have other functions such as scanning for a face looking at the screen. At the Apple event in September 2017, the company showed how these sensors interact. However, for the purposes of this article, only how face searching works is relevant.
The sophisticated sensor system in the iPhone
The proximity sensor (Proximity Sensor) detects when something appears in front of the iPhone. The Dot Projector projects tens of thousands of small dots forward to detect the shape of the face. What you can see flashing in the video is the infrared floodlight (Flood Illuminator). This supports the point projector in a dark environment with an additional infrared light cone. The infrared camera captures the reflected light and can thus determine whether a face is actually looking at the iPhone screen.
Since infrared light is outside the visible spectrum for the human eye, this is not noticeable in everyday use. But even a conventional smartphone camera can make the light visible.
Also Read: Hidden iPhone Map Reveals Exactly Where Users Have Been
Attention-sensitive functions can be deactivated in the settings
As we have shown, is the rumor that the iPhone secretly takes a photo every five seconds, nothing to it at all. If you still don’t feel completely safe, you can deactivate infrared scanning at any time in the settings. Just go to the path for that Ideas>Face ID & Passcode and enter your passcode. Disable the options Face ID attention check and Attention-sensitive functions. But beware, this removes an additional security level from Face ID, since the system no longer checks whether you are also looking at the iPhone when unlocking it.