How to Know if an App is Using your Camera or Microphone Secretly in the Background

Some of the apps in your Android device need to permission to access the camera or microphone in your device for them to function properly. However, some apps can use your device’s camera or microphone secretly in the background.

Privacy is at stake when third-party apps begin to secretly use your device’s camera or microphone. Luckily, there are several ways that you can detect the apps that are using your device’s camera or microphone secretly.

Through your device’s settings, you can go through your apps and review the permissions that have been granted to them. You can further revoke permissions in the apps including denying them access to your device’s camera or microphone. 

To view and revoke the permissions granted to apps:

• Open Settings on your phone

• On the list of settings, tap on Apps & notifications

• Under “Apps & notifications”, tap Advanced

• Tap “Permission manager” on the menu that appears

• On the list that appears, find Camera and Microphone. Tap on each of them independently to see the number of apps that have been granted permission to use them.

• Go through the list of apps to ascertain that the apps using the camera or microphone are legit. If you find a suspicious app in the list, tap on it and tap the Deny button on the next page that appears.

Using a Third-party App to detect if an App is using your Camera or Microphone Secretly

An easier way to know if an app is secretly using your camera or microphone is by using a third-party app that notifies you whenever an app starts using your camera or microphone. One of the best app for this is Access Dots.

Access Dots is a tool that works in the background to detect and notify you when another app starts to access your camera or microphone. As the name suggests, the tool uses colored dots to notify you when another app is using your camera or microphone.

To use the Access Dots tool:

• Download and install Access Dots on your device

• Launch the app by tapping on its icon

• Tap the toggle button on the launch page to enable the app

• Grant the app permission to access your device

• The app is now ready to use. Whenever another app is using your camera, a green dot will appear on the top right corner of the app page. An orange dot will appear when an app is using your microphone