Can the government/hackers see me through my iPhone camera?

What the title says. Is the government or hackers secretly watching us through our iPhone cameras and collecting data about us? I know that iPhones are relatively safe, but I read lots of news online of how this might be happening, and it makes me really scared. Take, for instance, the program Optic Nerve, where the GCHQ basically watched yahoo users through their webcams. How do we know this isn’t happening right now with our iPhones??

iPhone XR, iOS 16

Posted on Feb 19, 2023 10:09 AM

Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 19, 2023 10:50 AM

But what if this kind of thing is happening but we just don’t know about it? I mean, take Pegasus for example. If it wasn’t discovered that governments were doing this, it would never have been talked about. The government and companies are always being caught doing shady things, so how do we know this kind of mass surveillance isn’t happening? I’m not talking about some agent on the other side of a computer actively watching us through our cameras, but what if information from our cameras is just collected and stored in some government database?? Sorry if I sound paranoid but it just really freaks me out

9 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 19, 2023 10:50 AM in response to LD150

But what if this kind of thing is happening but we just don’t know about it? I mean, take Pegasus for example. If it wasn’t discovered that governments were doing this, it would never have been talked about. The government and companies are always being caught doing shady things, so how do we know this kind of mass surveillance isn’t happening? I’m not talking about some agent on the other side of a computer actively watching us through our cameras, but what if information from our cameras is just collected and stored in some government database?? Sorry if I sound paranoid but it just really freaks me out

Feb 19, 2023 11:28 AM in response to LD150

Yes I just got one!


sorry but one last thing. I have OCD so I tend to hyper worry about stuff like this. Have you heard of when Snowden leaked that optic nerve program that the GCHQ was running? How it basically captured images of people through their webcams. That was back in like 2010 too, so I’m worried that by now they are doing this to people on iPhones. I’m just super paranoid about my privacy, and it scares me how much info google, Facebook, advertising companies know about me.

Feb 19, 2023 10:52 AM in response to LD150

A lot of the stuff that Snowden leaked (ex the optic nerve program) was just considered fringe conspiracy theories until it became reality

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Can the government/hackers see me through my iPhone camera?

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