Whatsapp secretly accesses the microphone of the smartphone? Musk against Zuckerberg: ‘We can’t trust them’

We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by a controversy that does not exist. It happened on Twitter, a few days ago, when Elon Musk, always him, attacked Whatsapp: “We can’t be trusted,” he wrote, retweeting a tweet from Foad Dabiri, Twitter engineer already at Google. “What’s going on here?” he wondered, posting a screenshot of his smartphone showing that the chat app accessed the microphone nine times between 4:20 and 6:53, while Dabiri slept.

WhatsApp responded on its Twitter account, explaining that the cause is a bug on Android’s Privacy Dashboard, which would show incorrect data. But the problem has been persisting for some time now and many Whatsapp users have reported that they have seen the microphone turned on in the background recently. Meanwhile, the most disparate comments have been added to Dabiri’s thread, from the official Whatsapp account to Apple Support, up to that of one of the fathers of modern artificial intelligence, Yann LeCun (who, incidentally, works for Meta, i.e. the company owned by Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp). And thousands of Twitter users who have told their experience.

A bug

It is the second time in a few weeks that the Twitter CEO has argued with his rival Mark Zuckerberg, accusing him of “bias” for having supported the Democrats through his campaign donations. Musk is a master at taking the ball, and in fact shortly after he announced the possibility of sending direct messages via Twitter not only text, but soon also audio and video. All encrypted, therefore secure and proof of interceptions. But it’s a technology that Whatsapp has been adopting for years, so even if the app had recorded sounds while users slept, all the files sent would have been encrypted and accessible neither by WhatsApp nor by others.

“We’ve asked Google to investigate and remedy,” WhatsApp wrote on Twitter. “Users have full control over their microphone settings. Once permission is granted, WhatsApp accesses the microphone only 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 can’t hear them.” The thesis is also confirmed by a Google spokesperson, who said: “We are aware of the problem and are working closely with WhatsApp to resolve it.”

The solution

Some users have suggested restarting the device to fix the problem or tapping the microphone access notification shortcut to turn it off and then on again. In the meantime, however, we can all check if and in which cases WhatsApp has had access to the microphone of our smartphone. Usually the answer is positive; you can deny access if you are concerned about privacy, but in this case you will not be able to record any sound in WhatsApp, so goodbye voice and video messages.

On Android it’s like this:

Open the application Settings.

Touch App.

Touch the application you want to edit. If it is not visible, tap Vedit all apps. Then choose the app.

Touch Permissions. If any permissions have been granted or denied for the app, you will find them here.

To change a setting, tap it and choose Allow or Do not allow.

For microphone permissions, you can choose:

• Only allow while using the app: The application can use permission only when you are using the application.
• Ask every time: Every time you open the app, it will ask you to use the permission. It can use the authorization until the user is done using the app.
• Do not allow: The application cannot use the setting, even when you are using the app.

There have been no reports of unauthorized microphone access on Apple devices. However, those with an iPhone can access the App Privacy Report, which indicates which applications access the microphone, camera and location services.