The world has become small, I mean small! Your cousin living 7 seas across is just a video call away.
Compared to the earlier times when the letters could take months to reach your family living on some other land, now is the time when you can roam around the complete New York City right on a video call while sitting in Amsterdam.
This is insane, right? I mean if technology can be used to keep our wits in the right place, nothing could be better.
But nothing can be as amusing as it sounds. No matter how useful technology is, we humans somehow find a way to use it for the wrong purposes. The same goes for the FaceTime app built by Apple.
FaceTime was normally built for connecting us with our loved ones but our devil mind molded the use of the app for wrong deeds.
The app that was made to connect you with your beloved family members is used by a few people to satisfy their own needs by targeting your naive family members.
This makes it necessary for you to learn about the risks of using FaceTime and find out whether FaceTime is secure and safe for your family or not. In addition to the dangers, you need to learn about the necessary precautions that you need to take to safeguard your family members as well.
Is FaceTime Secure? What Are The Dangers Of Using It
FaceTime is secure but it still has some risks associated with it. The most common dangers of using FaceTime are listed below.
1. Addiction And Lack Of Real World Interaction
The first and the most common negative of using the FaceTime app is related to addiction. If most of the friends of your teen use an iPhone device, then using the FaceTime app is quite common.
Your teen will always prefer a video call over a simple voice call on any given day.
The child might not even realize that it’s more than one hour and they are continuously on a call with their friends.
The group video call feature of FaceTime is even more contagious. Once the 3-4 best buddies are on a group video call, their conversation might last for endless hours.
One should never develop such kind of addiction to FaceTime or any other app as it might give birth to various physical and mental issues.
Sparing long hours on FaceTime will decrease the interaction of kids with the real world. And this is something which should never be acceptable.
They might start to develop a sense of insecurity meeting real people as they might not be habitual in interacting with the real world. Although FaceTime calls are safe and private, the addiction they cause can be dangerous for teens and children.
2. Distraction From Other Work
Another reason why FaceTime is not safe is that spending long hours on it will lead to addiction which further leads to decreased productivity in other work.
This can be the greatest distraction for them, stopping them from focusing on other important responsibilities.
Your spouse might develop a habit of talking to their friends and family members late at night. This might lead to regular incomplete sleep giving a feeling of inactivity in the morning.
The teen might have to compromise with their study time to satisfy their urge to have a FaceTime video call with their friends.
Or maybe the time when they should move out and do some physical activity will get invested in using FaceTime.
3. Indulgence In Inappropriate Video Calling
Another bad thing about FaceTime is related to the indulgence of people in inappropriate activities.
Making new online friends using Instagram, Facebook, and other social media is quite common these days. In a few days, while having some sweet talks, they exchanged numbers and now they regularly talk on FaceTime.
The person on the other hand might try to slide your girlfriend into having a video or audio call on FaceTime that is not appropriate at all.
The chances of getting into such traps are less but when the mind gets deprived, doing such reprehensible tasks seems easy.
The biggest preys of these sexual predators are teens. And it might concern you but the reality is that they are easier to lure into such tasks.
According to a study, about 22% of teen girls send inappropriate photos or videos of themselves. On the other hand, 18% of boys of the same age do the same.
Parents can monitor their kids’ phone activities, but not all of them. Hence it is not safe to let your kids use FaceTime without your permission because they can fall into trouble.
4. Cyberbullying And Cyber Extorsion
Your lover or your teen might not think much before having an intimate video call. But if the guy on the other side appears to be a sadist, he/she will not think twice before circulating the video on the internet.
This is the biggest negative of using the FaceTime app. If the video of your loved one gets on the internet, this will break them down completely.
Even if they don’t upload the video on the internet, they can still exploit your dear one in many ways. If they record the video and save it with themself, they can easily use it to blackmail your lover or your child.
Using the video as a tool they might try to convince the target to further do something that fulfills their wrong desires.
Cyber extortion is another reason why these anonymous people try to bait new prey into showing themself completely.
They will promise the victim that if they send some money, their video will be deleted. But even if the victim sends money, what’s the guarantee that they will actually delete their video?
They might threaten your partner to transfer some extra money again.
5. Threat From Hackers
How secure is FaceTime, how safe is FaceTime, and can FaceTime be hacked? These are some of the most asked questions online. You will be glad to know that FaceTime is secure and end-to-end encrypted to secure your data from the third person. Even Apple doesn’t have any rights to decrypt your calls and listen to them.
But as technology and security are getting impregnable day by day, hackers are also working hard to find new ways to break into any system, software, or app.
We usually hear that Twitter, Instagram, and even Bitcoin accounts of celebrities got hacked. And their accounts are always much more secure than the accounts of normal people.
So how can anyone be so sure that their FaceTime security is enough and their activities are not in the view of any third person?
How To Secure Your Loved Ones From It?
Considering the FaceTime dangers and security risks you should take some precautions to use it safely.
Disabling Calls From Unknown People
The first thing that you can do to secure your teen from attending unknown voice and video calls on the FaceTime app is by not allowing those calls to come on the phone in the first place.
For this to happen, you need to change some settings on their iPhones.
1. Get access to the target iPhone/iPad and open the Settings app on their device.
2. In the settings app, you need to open the Phone section.
3. Next you have to simply toggle off the button that says Silence Unknown Callers.
Note – This feature is available for iPhone users having an iOS version 13 and above.
This way you can easily block unknown calls on your iPhone.
Ensuring Safety With FlexiSPY App
The above method will only work if your partner is ready to not pick up calls from unknown users. But if you think they like to socialize and meet new people on FaceTime, then I guess some other trick should be implemented.
One of the best ways to ensure the safety of your lover on FaceTime is by using an iPhone monitoring app like the FlexiSPY spy app.
When you set up the app on the target iPhone, you can capture the screenshots remotely from that iPhone. The screenshots can be remotely captured anytime while the user is using FaceTime, Instagram, or WhatsApp.
By getting the screenshots of the app, you can always be sure about the correct use of the FaceTime app.
The great thing about spying with FlexiSPY is that the app icon gets hidden after the installation is done. This will make sure that your lover does not get to know about FlexiSPY installation on their phone.
NOTE – The target iPhone should be jailbroken for using FlexiSPY. If your target iPhone is not jailbroken, the FlexiSPY app will help you do that and even help you hide the jailbreak traces.
Verdict
After reading the article you must be sure by now whether FaceTime is secure or not. In my opinion, FaceTime is safe to use as it can’t be hacked. But no matter how secure an app is, hackers find out some ways to get through it so there is always some risk.
Apart from that, the app has other dangers like it can be addictive and exposes your child to cyberbullying and scams. So if you want to let your kids use FaceTime then do it under your surveillance. You can keep track of all their FaceTime activities with the help of the FlexiSPY spy app.
