Among the many qualities that Elon Musk possesses, one of the most developed is the identification of enemies. His new victim is WhatsApp, a company he now accuses of spy on your users.

The criticism stems from the statement of another tweeter, who pointed out that the application is owned by Meta activate your device’s microphone at least every two minutes in the backgroundfor no apparent reason.

The screenshot was shared by engineer Foad Dabiri who posted an image where his Pixel 7 Pro phone shows the use of the microphone in morning hours.

“WhatsApp used the mic in the background, while I was sleeping, and since I woke up at 6am (and that’s just part of the timeline!) what’s going on?” he wonders.

Musk’s contribution, in a recent tweet, was as strong as lapidary “WhatsApp cannot be trusted”, as he believes that the software could access the microphone of devices such as the Google Pixel 7 and Samsung Galaxy S23.

A large number of users reported that the green dot with the microphone icon, within the messaging program, stay active even after signing out or closing the app.

Typically, this green dot only appears when your microphone is active, recording voice memos, or making video calls. Some went to check this business through the section permission history in the Android settings.

The messaging service responded to the viral publication, declining any responsibility in this regard. whatsapp alert has no participation on this glitch, which he attributes to “it’s an Android bug”.

“In the last 24 hours we have been in contact with an engineer from Twitter who reported an issue with his Pixel phone and WhatsApp. We believe this is an error by Android attributing incorrect information in its privacy panel and have asked Google to investigate and correct it”, refers to the main account of the app.

WhatsApp concluded its statement by noting that “users have full control over their microphone settings.”

A repeat accident

“Once permission is granted, WhatsApp accesses the microphone only when a user makes a call or records a voice note or video, and even then, these communications are protected by end-to-end encryption so WhatsApp cannot can hear them.” , it is read.

As it turns out, the incident isn’t limited to Dabiri, as many WhatsApp users have reported seeing the microphone turned on in the background over the past month.

Similar reports about this issue have been circulating on social networks for several weeks and users have detected the use of their device’s microphone through the privacy indicator feature available in Android 12.

Some have suggested that restarting the device will fix the problem, or tapping the microphone access notification link to turn it off and back on is a possible fix.