According to The Times Of India’s tech portal Gadgets Now, Google recently discovered an Android-related issue that triggered false privacy warnings and notifications in the Privacy Dashboard, giving the impression that WhatsApp was using a device’s microphone even when not in use.
The tech giant’s representative confirmed that they are actively working on providing a solution to the problem for their users.
This week, a Twitter engineer made headlines when he revealed screenshots showing that WhatsApp had been accessing his device’s microphone even when he was asleep. This has led to much speculation about the implications of this breach of privacy.
Image | Twitter
The circulated screenshots caused an uproar on social media, specifically from Elon Musk, Tesla and Twitter’s CEO. In response to it, he commented that the WhatsApp microphone access was “WhatsApp cannot be trusted.”
WhatsApp had been in contact with the Twitter engineer who noticed the issue and informed them about it. They recently expressed this information on their Twitter official page.
“Over the last 24 hours, we’ve been in touch with a Twitter engineer who posted an issue with his Pixel phone and WhatsApp. We believe this is a bug on Android that misattributes information in their Privacy Dashboard and have asked Google to investigate and remediate it.”
WhatsApp emphasized that users always have the ultimate authority over how their device’s microphone is used in conjunction with the app.
