Residents urged to audit AI app data settings to prevent biometric and ID theft

The UAE Cyber Security Council issued an official advisory on Saturday, 29 August, urging residents to exercise caution before granting camera, location, and microphone permissions to Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. The Council stated that the primary privacy threat often stems not from the prompts users type, but from the background data and device functions these services access. Risks of Passive Data Collection Granting camera permissions to unverified AI platforms can expose a user’s facial biometric data and specific details of their physical surroundings. The Council warned that some AI tools appearing in search engine results are specifically designed to harvest personal information without a clear or disclosed purpose. Officials noted that being indexed in a search result does not serve as a guarantee of a service's safety or legitimacy. The advisory is prompted by the rapid proliferation of AI-powered applications that demand access to sensitive mobile features traditionally reserved for standard software. The Council highlighted that location tracking and microphone access provide developers with deep insights into a user’s private life, which can be exploited if the tool originates from an unverified source. Guidelines for Secure AI Usage To mitigate these risks, the UAE Cyber Security Council recommends that users verify the reliability of a service provider before engagement. Instead of routinely accepting all permission prompts, residents should manually…