Reports are spreading online that the Android version of WhatsApp uses a microphone in the background without the user's knowledge.
It all started with engineer Foad Dabiri, who told about it on his Twitter back on May 6. He showed logs from the "Privacy Panel", which show that the messenger regularly used the microphone in the background — and even while the author was asleep.
But the situation was really widely publicized on May 9 — after the original post was retweeted by Elon Musk with the comment: "WhatsApp cannot be trusted."
Shortly after the publication of the Mask, the official WhatsApp account on Twitter came to life. According to the comment, the problem is not in the messenger, but in the Android bug, which leads to incorrect information display. The developers have already asked Google to investigate the situation and take action.
WhatsApp claims that users have full control over access to their device's microphone. Even after receiving permission, the messenger uses the microphone only during calls or recording voice or video messages, and the data is protected by end-to-end encryption so that even WhatsApp could not receive them.This is indirectly confirmed by the iOS version of the application. There is a similar section in the iPhone and iPad settings called "Application Privacy Report". And it seems that no one has recorded such activity there.