[netsectoday]

Just a few things to note here...

I wrote the original "Wife swipes open the phone" comment, so that's the context you seem to be missing. Sure you can see a little dot on your phone when YOU run some experiment today and look for it, but was that indicator available in the exact situation where the targeted ad was displayed? No.

Also, this incident happened in the past and we know there have been dramatic API changes on both Apple and Facebook products. The limits of the API today don't reflect the capabilities that were available to developers in the past. I doubt Facebook is hacking the App Store process to use hidden APIs. It was probably just available in the past and my wife granted the facebook app complete access to the mic, so they took what they wanted.

I'd make sure to disable that permission today too, just in case.

One last thing is I just opened my iPhone again and hit record. I honestly didn't see the tiny orange pixel at the top of my phone until you pointed it out. I was basically looking for the green video indicator light to show. So I'm technically wrong about NO indication, you're welcome.