New Delhi: Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Wednesday said the government will investigate an alleged “violation of privacy” and “unacceptable breach” by WhatsApp, following accusations that the instant messaging app has been accessing users’ microphones in an unauthorised manner.
Responding to a query by ThePrint via email, authorities at WhatsApp, however said a bug on Android devices was responsible for this microphone access and added that it has asked Google to investigate as well as remediate.
“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. @GoI_MeitY @_DigitalIndia (sic),” the minister’s tweet read.
Chandrasekhar was responding to a tweet by a user that went by the handle @foaddabiri and whose bio states that he is an engineer with Twitter.
In his tweet, which has over 70.6 million views, the user wrote, “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?” (sic). He also posted screenshots showing usage of his microphone by WhatsApp along with time stamps.
“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.
“Users have full control over their microphone settings,” WhatsApp further said. “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 Meta-owned platform also tweeted this statement from its Twitter handle.
Shivnath Thukral, director, Public Policy India at Meta, responded to Chandrasekhar’s tweet saying, “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.”