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Apple appears to have disabled Group FaceTime on its server side as a temporary workaround for a major bug discovered today that allows anyone who places a FaceTime call to listen to audio from the recipient without them answering the call. The bug even extends to video in some circumstances.
As a result, it is no longer possible to add a phone number to a Group FaceTime chat, thereby preventing the bug from being reproduced. However, some users report that Group FaceTime is still functional, so we’ll update as we learn more. One-on-one FaceTime calls continue to work normally.
As spotted by Mark Gurman, Apple’s system status page now says “Group FaceTime is temporarily unavailable” as of 7:16 p.m. Pacific Time.
Apple killed FaceTime conferencing server side it seems. Right move. pic.twitter.com/H23W2tirgr
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) January 29, 2019
As a result, it is no longer possible to add a phone number to a Group FaceTime chat, thereby preventing the bug from being reproduced. However, some users report that Group FaceTime is still functional, so we’ll update as we learn more. One-on-one FaceTime calls continue to work normally.
Apple has promised to release a software update that permanently addresses the bug “later this week,” and given the serious privacy implications, the company likely has engineers working on the update as we speak.
