WhatsApp and Android: Few days ago a Twitter engineer gave a serious complaint. He said WhatsApp’s microphone was turned on while sleeping at night. Elon Musk retweeted his company’s engineer’s tweet and wrote that WhatsApp can’t be trusted. The tweet spread like wildfire. A large number of users of the platform were worried. Everyone thinks they can listen to WhatsApp at night. WhatsApp has also accepted this horrible allegation. But they said that this problem is not theirs and it is an Android problem. Now a Google spokesperson has also said that the mistake was theirs. He said it was due to an error.
The phone used by Twitter engineer Fouad Dabri is a Google Pixel phone. That is why Google’s name is involved in this controversy. WhatsApp has requested Google to seriously look into the matter based on customer complaints. Then Google started investigating the matter. A spokesperson for the search engine giant has already confirmed that Google is looking into why this is happening.
According to a recent report, a Google spokesperson said that there is a bug in Android that causes the microphone to turn on automatically. He told media outlet Engadget, “After investigation, we realized that there is a bug in WhatsApp on Android that interferes with the privacy of users. This bug severely affected the incorrect privacy indicators and notifications in the privacy dashboard. We have started the work to correct this error,” he said.
WhatsApp has already clarified their position on the situation. When a Twitter engineer complained, WhatsApp said the issue was caused by a bug in Android. In another tweet, the world’s most popular instant messaging site added that its users have ‘full control’ over their microphone settings. A user can access the mic only when making a call or recording a video.
“Users have complete control over their mic settings,” WhatsApp wrote in a tweet. If allowed, a user can access the WhatsApp microphone only when making a call or recording a voice note or video. But WhatsApp has end-to-end encryption for everything from conversations to messages.
