Apple Watch just lost Walkie Talkie app thanks to potential eavesdropping problem

You'll find the Walkie Talkie feature has been turned off on your Apple Watch, and that's because Apple has found a major vulnerability that could allow someone to listen in to someone else's iPhone without their consent.

This is according to a statement from Apple to TechCrunch, where Apple apologized for the bug and said it was working on a fix so it could reinstate the feature soon.

As far as Apple knows the vulnerability wasn't used by anyone, but if it had been it would have been possible to listen in to other people's iPhones without their knowledge. Apple hasn't fully disclosed how the vulnerability would have worked.

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Apple found out about the issue thanks to a user-submitted report on the company's website.

In a statement to TechCrunch, Apple said: "Although we are not aware of any use of the vulnerability against a customer and specific conditions and sequences of events are required to exploit it, we take the security and privacy of our customers extremely seriously.

"We concluded that disabling the app was the right course of action as this bug could allow someone to listen through another customer’s iPhone without consent."

It's not, over

If you have an Apple Watch, you'll find the app will remain on your device but it won't work until the fix has been issued. There's currently no clear timescale of when the problem will be fixed.

Apple suffered from a similar vulnerability earlier this year when it was discovered Group FaceTime had an issue where you could listen in to other people's iPhones without their knowledge.