An Indicator Dot to Warn Snooping
Apple has made its mark for being so secure with its closed ecosystem of iOS and macOS. The company has recently launched a new security feature in its iOS 14, which will notify users with an indication dot light whenever an app is using the camera or microphone. Now, a similar feature is being made for Android too! While Google didn’t develop it to fit in default for every phone, thanks for making the Android open-source at least. This led several developers to tweak the code to invent their own apps. Thus, a third-party developer named IJP has come up with Access Dots, working similar to iOS notification light. This was already listed in Google’s Playstore and has over 100,000 installs already! Also, it garnered a rating of 4.3 from more than 3,000 users. I’ve personally tested the app to see how it works, and it’s really amazing and simple. It shows a tiny dot at the top right centre (default) whenever an app uses the camera. Since we give various apps permissions to use the camera and microphone for several uses, they may be speculated to spy on users. TikTok was badly caught earlier snooping clipboard when iOS launched this feature. While the app itself asks permissions to access microphone and camera, it’s reasoned for detecting the usage by others. But if you’re still septical, you can try the app for once and uninstall after finding the culprits. Users can customize the indication dot’s colour and position on the screen, but to increase the size, they have to purchase a pack, which looks more like a donation to the developers.