WhatsApp is not eavesdropping, it was a bug
A somewhat mysterious situation has occurred on WhatsApp: last month, Foad Dabiri reported on Twitter that his phone’s Privacy Dashboard indicated that WhatsApp was using the microphone. Pretty regularly too. Was he tapped? Do we have to worry? Google says no: “It was a bug.”
Overheard
Within the Privacy Dashboard of your smartphone you can see which apps all use the different permissions that your phone offers. This way you know approximately which app uses the permission very often and you can consider whether you feel comfortable with that. Dabiris dashboard showed that WhatsApp used the microphone every few minutes.
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Certainly people who feel that Facebook and Instagram are eavesdropping because you invariably see an ad for a new flavor of Baileys after you’ve just had a conversation about it probably won’t be very surprised, but Google says it wasn’t eavesdropping at all that whatsapp did. It was only a bug in Android. Google writes on Twitter:
“A recent Android bug affecting a limited number of WhatsApp users caused erroneous privacy indicators and notifications in the Android Privacy Dashboard. Users can now update their WhatsApp app to resolve this issue. We thank WhatsApp for their cooperation and apologize for any confusion this bug may have caused users.”
Update for WhatsApp
In a bit clearer language: it was not the case that WhatsApp eavesdropped on you. It was Android that falsely reported that the app was using your microphone. Still, it is a bit strange that you have to update WhatsApp to get rid of this Android problem. Anyway, given the hassle surrounding it, we recommend that you do that anyway. In any case, it is wise to have the most recent version of an app running, because more bugs are often ironed out in updates.
What do you think about this case? Are you ever afraid that your phone is eavesdropping on you? Leave it now in the comments to this article.
