When a Twitter user wakes up, he checks the Pixel 7 Pro’s privacy dashboard and sees WhatsApp accessing his smartphone’s microphone and activating it several times during the night. A very dubious activity that he hastened to report on the social network. In his tweet he says: WhatsApp used the microphone in the backgroundwhile i sleep […] What’s happening ? “.
WhatsApp has been using the microphone in the background since I was asleep and woke up at 6am (and that’s just part of the timeline!) pic.twitter.com/pNIfe4VlHV
— Foad Dabiri (@foaddabiri) May 6, 2023
Is WhatsApp eavesdropping on certain users without their knowledge? Can instant messaging be diverted from its primary use for spying? The engineer’s disclosure was clearly not lacking bring conspiracy theories to the surface, especially since the tweet Chief Twit himself was “powered” by Elon Musk. The sulphurous billionaire is always up for a good discussion, especially when he can damage WhatsApp, an app he doesn’t like. Very timely, Twitter announced support for video calling and end-to-end encryption of direct messages.
Bad WhatsApp notifications are caused by Android, according to Meta
Meta chose to communicate about this issue via Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg’s company posted the following message: “We believe thatthis is a bug in android Misattribution of information on the Privacy Dashboard and we’ve asked Google to investigate and correct the situation.” WABeta Info site, which specializes in Facebook’s messaging app, confirms Meta’s statements.
These notifications in Android’s privacy control panel, actually false positives : Despite all these alarming messages, the app does not actually access the microphone and does not listen to your conversations. Only Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy are affected. This is a recurring problem first appeared in November 2019. Google is still looking for the source of this problem.
