WhatsApp, on Wednesday, blamed a bug in the Google-supported Android operating system, following accusations that the instant messaging app has been accessing users’ microphones in an unauthorised manner.
The allegations of unauthorised access of the phone microphone was made by an engineer. “WhatsApp has been using the microphone in the background, while I was asleep and since I woke up at 6AM (and that’s just a part of the timeline!) What’s going on?” the user Tweeted.
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He also posted screenshots showing usage of his microphone by WhatsApp along with time stamps. This prompted the Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, to order an investigation. “This is an unacceptable breach n violation of Privacy. We will be examining this immediately and will act on any violation of privacy even as new Digital Personal Data protection bill is being readied,” the Minister tweeted.
WhatsApp, however, put the entire blame on Google. “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 in Android that misattributes information in their Privacy Dashboard and have asked Google to investigate and remediate,” said WhatsApp in a statement.
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Shivnath Thukral, director, Public Policy India at Meta, also responded to the IT Minister’s tweet. “We believe this is a bug in Android, Google has said they are looking into it. Your calls and voice notes are protected by end-to-end encryption so we cannot hear the microphone in any case. We’re aligned on safeguarding privacy,” said Thukral in a tweet.
Google is yet to comment on the matter.