WhatsApp denies ”microphone access bug” on Android devices

What­sApp has respond­ed to reports that its app is access­ing the micro­phone on some Android devices with­out user per­mis­sion. The com­pa­ny claims that this is a bug in Android’s pri­va­cy dash­board and not a breach of user privacy.

The issue was brought to light by a Twit­ter engi­neer who post­ed screen­shots show­ing that What­sApp was repeat­ed­ly using the micro­phone in the back­ground even when the app was not in use. The engi­neer, Foad Dabiri, said he was prompt­ed to tweet about it by Elon Musk, who has been crit­i­cal of WhatsApp’s pri­va­cy prac­tices and has endorsed Sig­nal as a more secure alternative.

What­sApp said in a tweet that it believes this is an Android bug that incor­rect­ly reports infor­ma­tion in the pri­va­cy pan­el. The com­pa­ny said it has asked Google to inves­ti­gate and fix it. Google con­firmed that it is aware of the issue and is work­ing close­ly with What­sApp to resolve it.

The bug seems to affect some Pix­el and Sam­sung devices, accord­ing to What­sApp blog wabetain­fo, which report­ed on it a month ago. The blog sug­gest­ed that reboot­ing the phone might help fix the prob­lem. How­ev­er, some users have said that the issue per­sists even after restart­ing their devices.

What­sApp has faced back­lash from users over its recent pri­va­cy pol­i­cy update, which sparked con­cerns about data shar­ing with Face­book. The com­pa­ny has delayed the imple­men­ta­tion of the new pol­i­cy and has tried to reas­sure users that their mes­sages and calls are end-to-end encrypt­ed and not acces­si­ble by Face­book. How­ev­er, some users have switched to oth­er mes­sag­ing apps like Sig­nal and Telegram, which have seen a surge in down­loads in recent months.