Twitter Chief Elon Musk is cautioning users of the app against a new WhatsApp bug that’s gaining access to users’ microphones.
The news comes after an engineer on Twitter revealed how the bug was able to creep inside the feature while he was fast asleep. A detailed account of the shocking incident was published through his account on Twitter.
And that’s when the director for the app’s engineering revealed through a screenshot of the Android phone flagging this mic’s use from the popular texting app. Throughout this whole time, it proved how the app was using the mic in the background during sleep and until he got up at around 6am in the morning. He was horrified and asked the company what in the world is going on.
The issue was only discovered through a privacy dashboard that has been up for grabs recently. It’s designed to detect as well as limit the platform from gaining access to a number of features.
From what we’re seeing from the screengrab on offer, it appears that the picture was taken from the app on several occasions when trying to get access to the phone’s mic during the timings of 4am to 7am.
As a response, the app says it can’t be trusted and that enables some users to send back replies with how they took action by quickly deleting this platform.
Moreover, this sudden news of a mic getting this much access is surely raising huge concerns as a huge invasion of privacy. But since then, we’ve seen Meta quickly jump into the picture and provide its two cents on the matter.
It claims that the whole controversy seems to be a kind of misunderstanding of some sort. They strongly believe it’s a type of bug across Android that end up aligning the wrong data across the Privacy Dashboard. Users have questioned Google to act quickly and provide a justification for the launch of an investigation on the matter.
In the same way, the company is also pointing out how such voice calls alongside messages from users tend to be E2E encrypted on the app. Therefore, it means that there is no one out there, not even the app alone who may decrypt such voice messages until they attain the users’s mic.
The leading texting app also mentioned how after getting permission, the platform gets access to the mic only when the users would make calls or would end up making recordings for videos or voice notes.
Even when that happens, the chats get protected through E2E encryption so this platform cannot even hear what is going on. Speaking to a media outlet recently, Google added how it’s working hard with the team at WhatsApp to see what the matter is all about.
But that is simply not good enough as tech billionaire and Twitter chief Elon Musk revealed how this is a major flaw and his reviews are certainly going to give the app a hard time in terms of harming its reputation.
Clearly, this is not the first time that he has raised his voice and concerns against Meta’s leading texting platform. Back in 2021, we saw him speak about WhatsApp not being reliable and hence promoted the use of Signal which is another name for an archrival for the company.
It came after WhatsApp mentioned through some new privacy policies how it would be able to share the data of users with Facebook. But just 7 days later, they opted to reverse the decision after getting immense backlash from the public.
Read next: Internet Access Cut Off In Major Regions Of Pakistan With Complete Ban On Twitter, YouTube, And Facebook After Protest
The news comes after an engineer on Twitter revealed how the bug was able to creep inside the feature while he was fast asleep. A detailed account of the shocking incident was published through his account on Twitter.
And that’s when the director for the app’s engineering revealed through a screenshot of the Android phone flagging this mic’s use from the popular texting app. Throughout this whole time, it proved how the app was using the mic in the background during sleep and until he got up at around 6am in the morning. He was horrified and asked the company what in the world is going on.
The issue was only discovered through a privacy dashboard that has been up for grabs recently. It’s designed to detect as well as limit the platform from gaining access to a number of features.
From what we’re seeing from the screengrab on offer, it appears that the picture was taken from the app on several occasions when trying to get access to the phone’s mic during the timings of 4am to 7am.
As a response, the app says it can’t be trusted and that enables some users to send back replies with how they took action by quickly deleting this platform.
Moreover, this sudden news of a mic getting this much access is surely raising huge concerns as a huge invasion of privacy. But since then, we’ve seen Meta quickly jump into the picture and provide its two cents on the matter.
It claims that the whole controversy seems to be a kind of misunderstanding of some sort. They strongly believe it’s a type of bug across Android that end up aligning the wrong data across the Privacy Dashboard. Users have questioned Google to act quickly and provide a justification for the launch of an investigation on the matter.
In the same way, the company is also pointing out how such voice calls alongside messages from users tend to be E2E encrypted on the app. Therefore, it means that there is no one out there, not even the app alone who may decrypt such voice messages until they attain the users’s mic.
The leading texting app also mentioned how after getting permission, the platform gets access to the mic only when the users would make calls or would end up making recordings for videos or voice notes.
Even when that happens, the chats get protected through E2E encryption so this platform cannot even hear what is going on. Speaking to a media outlet recently, Google added how it’s working hard with the team at WhatsApp to see what the matter is all about.
But that is simply not good enough as tech billionaire and Twitter chief Elon Musk revealed how this is a major flaw and his reviews are certainly going to give the app a hard time in terms of harming its reputation.
Clearly, this is not the first time that he has raised his voice and concerns against Meta’s leading texting platform. Back in 2021, we saw him speak about WhatsApp not being reliable and hence promoted the use of Signal which is another name for an archrival for the company.
It came after WhatsApp mentioned through some new privacy policies how it would be able to share the data of users with Facebook. But just 7 days later, they opted to reverse the decision after getting immense backlash from the public.
Read next: Internet Access Cut Off In Major Regions Of Pakistan With Complete Ban On Twitter, YouTube, And Facebook After Protest
