Facetime spy bug fixed, Apple says, but users will have to wait until next week for group calls

Facetime users will have to wait another week to chat with several friends at the same time as Apple said it would not re-activate the function until next week

Apple said its engineers have fixed a bug which allowed callers to spy on other iPhone and iPad users, but it will wait until next week to roll it out.

Rad more: This major iPhone bug turns Facetime into a privacy invasion tool

On Monday the company took the group chat feature offline as it was revealed that microphones were being activated before recipients accepted calls.

This meant the caller could hear audio before the call had been picked up.

The technology giant, which was the first ever company to reach a market value of over $1 trillion, was warned of the bug by 14-year-old Grant Thompson.

It took Thompson and his mother nine days of phone calls and even a letter to get through to the company.

“We want to assure our customers that as soon as our engineering team became aware of the details necessary to reproduce the bug, they quickly disabled Group Facetime and began work on the fix,” Apple said in a statement.

Read more: Apple cuts production on all three new iPhone models

“We are committed to improving the process by which we receive and escalate these reports, in order to get them to the right people as fast as possible.”

Meanwhile an investigation has been opened in New York over Apple’s failure to warn consumers over the bug.