Apple is paying the teenager who discovered its FaceTime bug
- Friday, February 8th, 2019
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Apple will be compensating the Arizona teenager who first discovered the problematic Group FaceTime bug, stating they will be investing an undisclosed amount into the boy’s education. 14-year-old Grant Thomson of Catalina, Arizona, initially stumbled upon the bug in early January, when attempting to talk about Fortnite strategies with his friends on the Group FaceTime feature.
The bug allowed iPhone users to secretly listen to the people they had called, even if the recipient hadn’t accepted the call. When Thomson realized what was happening, he told his mother, who tried to reach Apple. It took Mrs. Thomson several attempts spanning over a week to contact Apple, who still did not make the bug public until late January.
In an effort to contain the bug, Apple disabled the Group FaceTime feature. This past week, the tech giant finally released an update that would permanently patch the bug, but not before lawmakers could question why it took so long for the issue to be resolved.
“In addition to addressing the bug that was reported, our team conducted a thorough security audit of the FaceTime service and made additional updates to both the FaceTime app and server to improve security,” Apple said in a statement.