WhatsApp bug that shows users incorrect privacy indicators and notifications in the privacy dashboard went viral after an engineer working at Twitter shared screenshots claiming that WhatsApp is accessing and using his phone’s microphone when he is asleep. The issue escalated when Elon Musk replied to the tweet and said WhatsApp’s microphone access was “weird”.
Soon after that, Meta and Google confirmed that it’s a bug in the Android operating system which is showing incorrect microphone usages in the privacy dashboard.
Thankfully, there are several ways using which you can determine whether WhatsApp is accessing your phone’s microphone or camera or not. All you need to do is follow some simple steps.
Android smartphone running version 12 or above
Active WhatsApp account with microphone access
•Steps to check whether WhatsApp is using microphone in background•
With the launch of Android 12, Google added a dedicated Privacy dashboard to the operating system that allows users to keep a track of all the permissions provided to the apps and also keep track of usage timeline with time and date. This Privacy dashboard will help us determine whether WhatsApp is using a microphone in inactive state.
But, before that check if you see a random Green indicator at the top right corner randomly. This indicates that there’s some app that’s utilising either the camera or microphone. If that’s the case with you, then you need to pay extra attention.
Meanwhile, here’s how you can check if WhatsApp is using a microphone in the background. Also, for this you need to be sure that you haven’t used WhatsApp to make calls, record a voice note or create voice status.
Now, check if WhatsApp has used the microphone when it was not in use. If yes, then WhatsApp is most likely not affected by the recent bug. But, if it is using the microphone, then there’s a problem.
•What you should if WhatsApp is using Microphone in background•
The first instinct in this case should be disabling the microphone access from WhatsApp. For this, simply head to WhatsApp from Apps section and then disable Microphone access.
