Justice Vandyke

On Jan. 19, a fourteen-year-old boy named Grant Thompson discovered a glitch within Apple’s Facetime app.

If someone was already on a Facetime call with someone and they wanted to add someone else to the call, they would be able to see through that person’s phone and even hear what they were doing before they answer the phone.

Thompson and his mother, Michelle Thompson, spent the next nine days trying to contact Apple and let them know about the glitch.
Later, when Apple came out to announce the fix will be available February 8th, they also thanked the Thompsons. On Jan. 21, Apple had disabled the multi-person call feature so that way people wouldn’t come across this glitch. Now people believe that Apple will have more than the bug to worry about since they had a slow response to the Thompsons. According to Fortune, a Texas Lawyer, Larry Williams II, had filed a lawsuit against Apple because the glitch had allowed unknown people to listen into his private meetings with his clients.

After everyone got word about the glitch, everyone started to perform this glitch and talk about it on social media. Thousands of people tweeted how they had found the glitch and they also posted their videos that they took doing the glitch.

According to CNBC, on Feb. 1, a high level executive from Apple flew down to Arizona to see the Thompsons and while he was there, he mentioned that Grant is eligible for the bug bounty program. He would get paid for finding security flaws within Apple’s products. The executive told the Thompsons that they, “would hear from their security team the following week in terms of what that meant.”

Apple started this program back in 2016, and it is designed to reward people who find flaws and bugs security related in Apple’s products, just like Thompson did. However, it is invite-only and is limited to certain security flaws. The Thompsons could get paid anywhere from about $25,000 to $200,000 depending on the threat of the flaw or bug that was found.

Apple has finally released the update to fix the bug that allowed others to listen and see what others were doing while calling them. When they posted the update, they apologized for the bug and then later thanked the Thompson family for discovering the bug. Apple is giving a reward to fourteen-year-old Grant Thompson who found the glitch, but the exact amount of how much he is getting. Once everybody downloads the new iOS update, nobody will need to worry about being stalked without them even knowing it.