The Indian government is all set to investigate a claim that WhatsApp accessed the microphone of smartphone users while the phone was not in use, said Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Wednesday.
Breach Of Privacy By WhatsApp
The minister said in a tweet that the government will examine the alleged breach of privacy even as the new Digital Personal Data Protection Bill was being readied.
This all started following a claim that WhatsApp accessed a user’s microphone while he was sleeping.
This is an unacceptable breach n violation of #Privacy
— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) May 10, 2023
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 https://t.co/vtFrST4bKP
In a tweet, an engineering director at Twitter, Foad Dabiri said, “WhatsApp has been using the microphone in the background, while I was asleep and since I woke up at 6 AM,” on Saturday.
In response to Dabiri’s tweet, Chandrasekhar said, “This is an unacceptable breach and violation of privacy.”
Further adding, “We will be examining this immediately and will act on any violation of privacy even as the new Digital Personal Data Protection bill is being readied,”.
Tweet Gone Viral
It seems that Dabiri’s tweet went viral attracting over 65 million views.
In its defense, WhatsApp said that it has been in touch with the Twitter engineer over the last 24 hours, who posted an issue with his Pixel phone and WhatsApp.
WhatsApp said, “We believe this is a bug on Android that misattributed information in their Privacy Dashboard and have asked Google to investigate and remediate,” in a tweet.
Further claiming that users have full control over their mic settings.
It 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,”.
While proving his theory, the engineer working with Twitter shared screenshots of his phone which showed WhatsApp accessing and using his handset’s microphone at various times even as he was asleep.
In the meantime, the screenshots prompted several users such as Twitter and Tesla Inc chief Elon Musk, to raise concerns.
To the extent where Musk tweeted, “WhatsApp cannot be trusted,” on the screenshot shared by Dabiri.
Adding, “Or that WhatsApp founders left Meta/Facebook in disgust, started #deletefacebook campaign & made major contributions to building Signal. What they learned about Facebook & changes to WhatsApp obviously disturbed them greatly.”
It appears that WhatsApp has been under scrutiny in India over various issues.
The Meta-owned messaging app saw a two-hour service disruption, prompting the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to ask the platform to share reasons for the disruption, during October last year.
