Working to fix bug which shows WhatsApp accessing phone's mic: Google

Google on Thursday said it had discovered the bug in Android which produced “incorrect privacy indicators and notifications in the privacy dashboard” and therefore made it seem like WhatsApp was accessing the microphone of the device even when the app was not in use.

A spokesperson for the company said it was working to develop a fix for its users.

Earlier this week on Tuesday, an engineer working on Twitter shared screenshots in which he alleged that WhatsApp was accessing and using his handset’s microphone at various times even as he was asleep.


The screenshots prompted several users, including Twitter and Tesla Inc chief Elon Musk, who said WhatsApp’s microphone access was “weird”.

On Wednesday, the minister of state for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar called it “an unacceptable breach of privacy” and said that the central government would look into it immediately.

Also read | Will examine WhatsApp’s breach of privacy, says MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar

“This is an unacceptable breach n violation of #Privacy. We will be examinig this immdtly and will act on any violation of privacy even as new Digital Personal Data protection bill #DPDP is being readied,” Chandrasekhar said in a tweet.


Responding to Chandrasekhar’s tweet, Shivnath Thukral, the director of public policy at Meta India said that Google was looking into the issue as it was a bug in Android.

“We believe this is a bug on 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,” Thukral said in his tweet.

Earlier on Tuesday, WhatsApp had in a separate tweet said that it had been in touch with the Twitter engineer who had flagged the issue.

“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,” WhatsApp said in a tweet, adding that users had full control over how WhatsApp accessed the mic in the device.

“Once granted permission, WhatsApp only accesses the mic when a user is making a call or recording a voice note or video - and even then, these communications are protected by end-to-end encryption so WhatsApp cannot hear them,” the company had said in another tweet.