WhatsApp was recently blamed by a user for accessing microphone in the background and it didn’t took long for the post to spread across social media. People came up with all sorts of blames bringing in how WhatsApp is owned by Meta and how the latter has been accused of breaching people’s privacy multiple times in the past. Now, WhatsApp has a reply for all those people where the app has blamed Android for the microphone bug.
On May 6, a Twitter engineer who goes by the name of Foad Dabiri posted a screenshot on the microblogging platform showing how WhatsApp has accessed the microphone of the device multiple times even though the user didn’t use his phone once as he was asleep.
WhatsApp then came up with a reply yesterday stating that it has been in touch with the Twitter engineer for 24 hours who posted an issue with his Pixel phone. Moreover, WhatsApp believes that the microphone bug is present in Android that “mis-attributes information in their Privacy Dashboard”. It says that it has also gotten in touch with Google to investigate and remediate.
It further reaffirmed its users that they have full control over their mic settings. “Once granted permission, WhatsApp only accesses the mic when a user is making a call or recording a voice note or video – and even then, these communications are protected by end-to-end Encryption so WhatsApp cannot hear them”, tweeted WhatsApp.
WhatsApp’s reply came after Twitter CEO Elon Musk also took to the platform to tweet that “WhatsApp cannot be trusted”. A confirmation from Google regarding the microphone bug is yet to arrive. Till then, users have become skeptical about how the chat app is handling the data.
Meanwhile, in related news to WhatsApp, the Messaging app has been focusing on adding features to its app. It recently launched WhatsApp for Wear OS in beta version. Users can now stay connected and access their chats and messages directly from their smartwatch. At the moment, the app includes features like chat messaging and voice messages.