So as you may know, i'm an iPhone user and a hater of Google. Recenly, it has came to my attention that i am somehow being spied on, as this has been appearing lately every single day:
Now i did not open the camera at all, and somehow it's saying that's being used.
Not only that, but basically i had a qr code saved in my camera roll. Every time someone scans it, i get a notification. However, randomly at 12 am, somehow i got a notification saying that someone scanned it. The QR code was not shared anywhere or posted, and the phone was offline at that time too. Now i think that its probably the time to switch from iOS to android.
Why is android superior then iOS, why, and how is it safer then iOS and what phone should i buy? (no pixel tho)
This isn’t an iPhone problem. This doesn’t happen normally. There’s one of two things going on:
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you jailbroke your phone/sideloaded/installed some shady app. Solution: hard reset that phone and set it up as new. Do not copy over anything, and use the phone as close to stock as possible for a bit. These notifications will stop. Then you add apps and stuff slowly until you figure out what is the offender.
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you’re being targeted. Somebody did something nefarious and they are probably good at it. It’s not easy to get into a stock device. I find this option possible but unlikely unless you’re a VIP or you’ve REALLY pissed off an ex lover or are married to overly attached girlfriend.
*Edit
Maybe there’s a third option. Maybe the phone’s hardware is just borked somehow - a chip or sensor or something is broke. /shrug. I suppose that’s possible too.
Nope, i never jailbroken or given my phone to anyone. I always start a screen recording whenever i pass my phone to someone.
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Maybe fully reset/restore your phone first to wipe any malicious apps?
If anything, use a degoogled OS instead of android.
This being displayed as "Unknown" is likely just a bug or an app you (very) recently uninstalled. And you probably opened the camera app by accidentally swiping right to left on the lock screen. Even just a slight swipe will launch the app so it's ready when you're done swiping.
And I'm not even sure what you're talking about regarding your QR code.
Android is not de facto superior to iOS, nor is the opposite the case.
If you're really that paranoid, even GrapheneOS on a Pixel shouldn't calm you down because it also requires proprietary firmware by Google (and possibly other vendors) to run on these proprietary devices. In this case my advice would be to stop using smartphones altogether and rely on open source computers (couple of RISC-V options out there I think) for your computing needs.
the grass is roughly as green on the other side, android is no better for privacy unless u are willing to put in an unreasonable amount of work into it which isnt worth it for most peoples threat profile, i recommend switching passwords on everything and maybe factory resetting ur phone. Also u should switch but only because apple makes garbage products.
Are you sure you've NEVER shared the qr code with anyone? If so, what is it actually for? Because a qr code's purpose is to be shared. If you've ever shared it before, people can have copies of it. I myself take a picture of a qr code and load it from my camera roll instead of directly opening the link from my camera, because I want to keep a copy of it.
Now if you truly haven't shared it to anyone, then it is either a bug with whatever app, website, or mechanism you generated the qr code from and it's alerting you; or it's an IOS bug; with the former the more likely. Like others have said, this is absolutely not normal behavior on a non-jailbroken iphone. And to Apple's credit, the iphone is pretty secure. This should be the order of steps before going nuclear:
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Find out if the source of the issue is the app or mechanism the QR code is using to alert you. Check if it's a bug or it's actually a malicious/rogue app.
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If that's all good, clean up your phone. Check which apps have access to your camera and microphone, and disable anything you don't need or trust. Delete apps if necessary.
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If that still doesn't stop it, hard reset your phone.
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If you want privacy you either do graphene on a pixel (cake and eat it too), or linux phone (huge downgrade in usability and reliability)
Stock Android is not acceptable, it's even worse than Apple.
Do a DFS of all (non-app-specific) settings. Disable almost everything, for the time being.
Buy an Android phone that you can flash to change the OS to remove all Google dependancies and use F-Droid to get all of your apps.
