INDIANAPOLIS — Since you’ve downloaded the new iOS 14 operating system for you iPhone, have you wondered what the heck those orange and green dots are in the upper right-hand corner of your screen?
“Those dots indicate that your microphone or your camera are in use by either the device itself or for an app working in the background,” said Brian Norton, INDATA Project Head at Easterseals Crossroads. “Green means that your camera is being used, and then orange means that your microphone is being used by an app.”
Now that you know what these dots are, why are they there?
“It’s really helpful information for folks who are concerned about security and privacy,” Norton said. “It just really helps you know what your device is doing at different times. We all have security and privacy issues, and there are obvious reasons for that too. We hear stories all the time about, 'Is my device listening to me? What are the companies doing with what they're recording?' This is just helping us better understand what our devices are doing at different times.”
You can actually going into you “Settings” menu on your iPhone, then click on "Privacy," and that’s where you can check to see which apps are using your camera and microphone by clicking on those icons. Once there, you can also click a virtual switch, which stops those apps from having access to you camera and microphone.