Firefox Working on Fixing a One-Year-Old Bug in Its Android App That Keeps Camera Active After Users Have Minimized the App or Locked Their Phone

Mozilla says it's working on fixing a bug in Firefox for Android that keeps the smartphone camera active even after users have moved the browser in the background or the phone screen was locked. From a report: A Mozilla spokesperson told ZDNet in an email this week that a fix is expected for later this year in October. The bug was first spotted and reported to Mozilla a year ago, in July 2019, by an employee of video delivery platform Appear TV. The bug manifests when users chose to video stream from a website loaded in Firefox instead of a native app. Mobile users often choose to stream from a mobile browser for privacy reasons, such as not wanting to install an intrusive app and grant it unfettered access to their smartphone's data. Mobile browsers are better because they prevent websites from accessing smartphone data, keeping their data collection to a minimum. The Appear TV developer noticed that Firefox video streams kept going, even in situations when they should have normally stopped.

Most annoying Firefox Mobile bug

[DrXym]

Some pages say they contain media and Firefox puts up some kind of media player notification toast and you cannot dismiss or remove it even if Firefox is running in the background.

Re:

[Solandri]

What's really annoying is this will happen even if you've denied Firefox permission to play media. You can get rid of the notification by killing Firefox from the running apps list. You'll lose all open tabs though.

Re:

[Briareos]

Every time I've done this my tabs were all there, they just had to be reloaded since killing the app also invalidates the cache...

Re: An exit option would be nice

[satanicat]

On samsung devices, tapping the button left of the home button will expand a list of all running apps. I guess like alt-tab in windows. Anyways you can terminate apps by flicking it out of the list.

Im sure it works very similarly on most android devices.

A feature, not a bug!

[ebrandsberg]

You want to stream how law enforcement handles your phone during an unsanctioned search? Use this bug! You can start streaming and lock your phone before handing it to them. Or do this when having an encounter with law enforcement, and they can't easily unlock the phone to stop the streaming...

Re: A feature, not a bug!

[BAReFO0t]

There are already apps for this. Especially on rooted/Xposed phones.

Android Bug

[jeremyhu]

Isn't this a bug in Android for allowing an app to do this in the first place?

Re: Android Bug

[BAReFO0t]

Yes, yes it is.

But Android is a strange model where somehow apps are just visual panels and background tasks that communicate with intents, and the panels, aka all foreground stuff, are apparently all running inside one single system server. Not a good choice IMHO. Though I might miss some details.

I’m under your control

[Melodie199]

I’m under your control. () Let’s have a great time together ==>> kutt.it/PMaEQc

Not just the camera!

[BAReFO0t]

This is the case for Shashdot itself too, for some reason.

Even "closing" the app in the task switcher does not stop draining battery or even stop some background file transfers!
Hell, not even switching off and on mobile data (with wifi off) helped.
Only force-closing it did the trick.

I really hope this fixes this entire problem.

Re:

[antdude]

/. iOS app is crappy. Is it better in Android?

Oh right

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Right, a 'bug' that just happens to leave the camera active when you lock the screen or minimize the app.

Excuse me if I'm skeptical of this 'explanation'.

Isn’t this an OS bug?

[juancn]

Android is a mobile OS. Since apps are (usually) full screen, background use of the camera is rather fishy. I would expect the OS to disable the camera once the app loses focus or at least provide a prominent status indication that the camera is on. Same for the microphone or location.

Agree

[Kenneth242]

Agree