Do you have the app Shazam installed on any of your Macs?

Patrick Wardle has just discovered that the current version does not stop recording when running on macOS / OS X. Even though you may have turned it to off, the app continues to record audio from a microphone. Although this is not apparently used in any way, Shazam could readily be subverted to deliver that audio to something else, which might do malicious things with it.

His full account of this is on his blog, together with a statement from Shazam’s developers that this was unintentional and they will “look to address this in a future update”.

You may wish to remove Shazam from your Macs until its developers have fixed this issue.

If you’re concerned about the possibility of apps monitoring your built-in video camera and microphone, then you should install Objective-See’s free OverSight, which keeps an eye on audio and video recording.