WhatsApp didn’t spy: Google confirms Android bug caused privacy breach

Earlier this week, WhatsApp was accused of using the phone’s microphone without the user’s permission. Many people criticized the messaging app, Elon Musk said that WhatsApp is not safe and some of you even wanted to take action against WhatsApp for this privacy breach.

Meta, the company that owns WhatsApp, claimed in its defense that a bug in Android caused this problem, implying that the messaging app was not to blame for this behavior. Turns out they were right after all. Google has confirmed that there is a bug in Android that causes false privacy warnings for WhatsApp using your phone’s microphone.

“Based on our current investigation, this reported Android bug affecting WhatsApp users produces incorrect privacy indicators and notifications in the Privacy Dashboard,” Engadget quoted a Google spokesperson as saying in this report.

The company also says it is working to fix the problem. WhatsApp gets a lot of scrutiny, and rightly so. It has over 1 billion daily active users on the platform and has over 400 million users in India itself. Ever since Facebook (now Meta) bought WhatsApp, there have been concerns about the messaging app’s growth direction.

For example, WhatsApp now has more spam than ever. It also has a different business account that companies use to communicate with their customers. You also receive tracking information from brands, which should usually be done with the user’s consent, but it doesn’t happen often.

We personally went through the digital dashboard to see if WhatsApp grants similar permissions to our device as well, but we did not find anything suspicious or worrying in this regard. Either way, it’s good to see that Google is quick to share an update on this issue, helping WhatsApp mitigate the criticism it’s been receiving on social media this week.

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