A Twitter employee accused WhatsApp of secretly accessing his microphone. Messenger believes this is a bug in the Android system. You can check yourself if it has been accessed suspiciously.
“You can't trust WhatsApp,” Twitter boss Elon Musk recently wrote on the text messaging service. The reason for the verbal attack on the reporter was the tweet of one of his employees. In his cell phone's settings, he noticed that WhatsApp was accessing his cell phone's microphone at an hour when he said he was sleeping at night.
Whatsapp cannot be trusted https://t.co/3gdNxZOLLy
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 9, 2023
He supported his statement with a relevant screenshot that Musk also added to his tweet. Actually, WhatsApp should only use the microphone for calls and when recording video and audio messages.
That's what WhatsApp says
WhatsApp responded immediately. They are in contact with the man and they believe the screen is a bug in Android's privacy dashboard and have asked Google to check it out. The affected Twitter employee uses WhatsApp on a Google Pixel phone.
This is how you can check if WhatsApp is secretly accessing your microphone.
Do you also want to check if you are getting suspicious microphone access from Messenger? This is easily possible on Android phones. This is how you need to do it:
On Samsung phones, you open the settings and then select "Security and privacy". Then tap on “Privacy” and select “Microphone” in the next window. Then you can see which app is accessing your microphone and when.
On Google Pixel phones, you open the settings and then select "Security & privacy" as well. Then tap on “Privacy” and select “Privacy Dashboard” in the next window. There you need to tap on “Microphone”.
You can also see when WhatsApp is accessing the microphone on iPhone. All you have to do is enable the “Application Privacy Report” feature.