Reason why your iPhone is constantly tracking your face leaves people freaked out
Some people are worried their iPhones are secretly taking pictures of them without them knowing. But it begs another question, why?
Well, the YouTube channel Apple Explained delved into the details of why it might seem this way.
Turns out, your iPhone does use its infrared camera every five seconds, but it’s not actually snapping a picture.
"It's true that the infrared camera activates about every five seconds, and shoots out 30,000 invisible dots," Apple Explained said.
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It's not the phone taking a photo 'per say' but rather checking to see what's in front of it.
This is not unusual for iPhones as this depth camera system was first introduced on the iPhone 10 and has been part of Apple's smartphones ever since.
Since then, the tech giant has been using it for 'a variety of features to make iPhones more functional.'
The channel continued: "Initially, it was used to map your face and use it as a biometric authenticator."
So when users unlocked their iPhone or bought an app, they didn't have to enter a passcode or PIN to do so.
The device would use the infrared camera to recognise your face and unlock the phone or approve purchases.
The good news is, you can turn it off if you're not happy with it.
The reason your phone keeps doing this is probably because you have "Attention Aware" turned on. You can find this under Settings > Face ID & Passcode.
"If you haven't touched your iPhone's display in a few minutes, it'll check to see if you're looking at the display before dimming it to save battery," the narrator described.
"Before, iPhone had no way of knowing where you were looking and it would dim the display regardless."
Another reason is that the iPhone knows to lower the volume of alarms and alerts when it knows you're already looking at the device. Same for notifications, any messages or notifications can automatically be revealed that would otherwise be hidden if your face wasn't recognised.
The important thing to know is that none of this information is shared with third parties or sold for AI purposes. The mapping data of your face is stored locally on 'iPhone's secure enclave so no one, not even Apple has access to it.'
That said, if the thought of your iPhone constantly tracking your face bothers you, you can always go into your settings and switch it off.
After learning about this, it's safe to say people were spooked.
'So it's not taking a picture, it's actually watching/checking your face? How is that LESS scary?' asked one person.
Another sarcastically said 'Oh, no worries. It's just mapping, cataloguing, and storing your entire environment 'locally'. Totally not suspicious'.