When he was sleeping between 4:20 and 6:53 in the morning, Dabiri posted a photo demonstrating that it occurred every two minutes.
In response, WhatsApp said that it was a “bug on Android”.
“We have been in contact with a Twitter engineer for the last 24 hours after he wrote about a problem with his Pixel phone using WhatsApp.”
“We think this is an Android bug that incorrectly attributes info in their Privacy Dashboard, and we’ve requested Google to look into and fix it,” the statement reads.
“Users have complete control over their microphone settings after they give WhatsApp permission, WhatsApp only uses the microphone when a user is on the phone, recording a voice memo, or creating a video. Even then, these interactions are encrypted end-to-end, so WhatsApp cannot overhear them.”
One Twitter user said in response:
“Would you sue @elonmusk for defamation of the brand if it were absolutely true?”
Dabiri wasn’t the only one to claim that they had experienced this issue during the last month or longer.
“Other Twitter users said they removed the app after seeing WhatsApp had turned on its microphone in the background.”
“The problem is well-known on Reddit, where several users have reported that WhatsApp turns on the microphone.”
“A tweet from 10 days earlier describes a situation that is similar to what Dabiri shared.”
“The status bar’s green dot is continuously lit up all day.” A Reddit user wrote: “When I click on it, it says WhatsApp gaining access to the mic every 3–4 minutes.”
Is anybody else experiencing this? Cutting off authorization in WhatsApp settings is the only solution I could find, however, it is impractical for someone who makes a great deal of WhatsApp calls.”
Musk said that a lot of Americans were unaware that Meta/Facebook-owned WhatsApp.
This is rather bizarre. WhatsApp is used by almost two billion people worldwide, so any issues are not trivial. It is understandably quite alarming that such things may be compromised. It’s not difficult to assume that things may be compromised given what we’ve seen in the past with attempts to manage the social media narrative. We must constantly keep in mind that there are negative aspects to any social networking platform. We can tell that we are being monitored based on what we watch and the advertisements that appear on our computers. But we must also exert every effort to prevent the government or any platform from listening in on our private talks.
Author: Scott Dowdy
