Yesterday, a work friend told me that their Apple Watch was going through something extremely strange. They said that it was vibrating on their wrist, flickering through apps, changing their music, and performing actions that they likened to a hack. However, what appears to have happened is what are now commonly known as ‘ghost touches’.
Now obviously, I’m not going to say that the Apple Watch S9 and Watch Ultra 2 have impenetrable operating systems – nothing is hackproof, no lock is unbreakable. However, quite a lot of people have taken to Apple’s forums in fear that their smartwatches have been compromised. One user supposedly got such an incident on camera.
I’ve seen several threads raising such concerns, including one where the original user reported that the keyboard had popped up and typed ‘We are in control’ on its own. The work friend experienced a similar situation, though in the form of Slack-messaging somebody ‘Hello!’
In both of these situations, it’s my guess that autofill did most of the work with the messages, with the screen being spammed with fake inputs, and Slack accessed through a quick response. As far as Apple’s concerned, the ‘ghost touches’ are just a software glitch – not a hack.
Apple issued a software update earlier this month that supposedly addresses this issue, per ZD Net. WatchOS 10.4 The patch notes included the line: “Resolves an issue that causes some users to experience false touches on the display”.
One of Apple’s diehard forum members, LD150, has also been confirming across forum posts that it’s a glitch.
So, fortunately, the good news is that it was just a bug with the previous version of WatchOS 10.3. It was annoying bug that could compromise users, by spamming the PIN code to lock them out of the device, or by sending messages to other people, but thankfully it doesn’t appear to be a security issue.
If you’re concerned about experiencing ghost touches, the best thing you can do is update your operating system. You can do this by accessing the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, then tapping General, followed by Software Update.
A temporary fix can also be applied by force resetting the watch – hold the crown button in, along with the side button, for up to 10 seconds (until the Apple logo appears).
Image: Apple