Elon Musk criticized WhatsApp on Twitter amid reports that it the application owned by Mark Zuckerberg would be listening to its users.
In accordance with Daily MailMusk said that “messaging app cannot be trusted” in response to a thread of tweets from a user who said that WhatsApp accessed their phone’s microphones while they were sleeping.
It marks the second time in just a few weeks that the Twitter and Tesla billionaire has criticized his tech rival Zuckerberg, accusing him of “bias” for supporting Democrats through his campaign donations.
Musk’s latest comment came in response to a screenshot shared by Foad Dabiri, who showed how his WhatsApp microphone turned on nine times between 4:20 am and 6:53 am while he was sleepingas can be seen in the tweet above.
WhatsApp responded to the problem on its Twitter account and pointed out that the Dabiri incident “is a bug in Android”. But the problem has persisted for months.
It is not an isolated case
The incident is not limited to Dabiri, as many WhatsApp users have reported seeing the microphone activated in the background for the past month or more.
Some users have suggested that restarting the device will fix the problem or “tap the microphone access notification shortcut to turn it off and then turn it back on,” shared one redditor.
“In the last 24 hours we have contacted a Twitter engineer who posted an issue with his Pixel phone and WhatsApp. We believe this is a bug in Android that attributes misinformation in its privacy panel and we have asked Google to investigate and fix it.”, WhatsApp tweeted.
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 mis-attributes information in their Privacy Dashboard and have asked Google to investigate and remediate. https://t.co/MnBi3qE6Gp
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) May 9, 2023
WhatsApp added: “Users have full control over their microphone settings. Once permission is granted, WhatsApp only accesses the microphone when a user is making a call or recording a voice memo or video, and even then, these communications are protected by end-to-end encryption, so WhatsApp cannot i can hear them”.
WhatsApp’s tweet about Dabiri’s post suggests that Google’s privacy panel is to blame for the problem. Privacy Dashboard is a service that allows users to see which apps are accessing their data, which ones have permission, and when it happens.
