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Is Your iPhone Secretly Snapping Photos Every 5 Seconds?

Tech Savvy
4 min readOct 10, 2024

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Photo by OOI JIET on Unsplash

Did you know your iPhone is secretly taking pictures of you every five seconds?

Wait, what? Suddenly, you’re staring at your front-facing camera like it’s plotting against you, capturing your worst angles — double chins, weird squints, all of it.

Before you reach for the duct tape (because that’s clearly the universal cure for tech-induced paranoia), let’s slow down for a second.

Yes, there’s a tiny grain of truth to this wild idea, but it’s not as creepy as it sounds. Your iPhone isn’t stashing an album of accidental selfies in some secret folder. What’s really happening is a lot more advanced — think sci-fi, not surveillance.

Before you start panicking about a rogue collection of awkward close-ups, here’s what’s actually going on.

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The Mysterious Infrared Camera

Well, here’s the deal: the iPhone’s TrueDepth camera system (introduced with iPhone 10) activates about every five seconds, but it’s not taking photos. Instead, it’s firing 30,000 tiny, invisible dots that map out what’s in front of the phone.

Sound a little “Big Brother”? Maybe. But it’s more like “overachieving personal…

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Tech Savvy
Tech Savvy

Written by Tech Savvy

Exploring tech, science, and life’s big questions with a curious mind and a dash of humor.

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