software error
Constant microphone snooping? Why Elon Musk warns about Whatsapp – and what’s really behind it
Is it better not to say anything? Elon Musk thinks Whatsapp is untrustworthy. (icon picture)
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“You can’t trust WhatsApp” – that’s what Elon Musk claims. He relies on a report by a Twitter employee whose smartphone shows strange accesses by the messenger to his microphone. There is a simple explanation for this.
Twitter engineer and software developer Foad Dabiri wonders: Why does his smartphone show that the Whatsapp messenger keeps accessing his microphone overnight, even though he has slept? He won’t make any sense of it. Also in the comments, people ask themselves: How can that be? Whatsapp is asked to explain itself. Dabiris boss Elon Musk has no interest in it. He writes in another tweet: “Whatsapp cannot be trusted.” This has already been seen more than 80 million times – a huge problem for Whatsapp and its parent company Meta.
Musk openly railed against Facebook and Meta
But that’s not all for Musk. Because a hint that many do not know which group Whatsapp belongs to and the Facebook parent Meta is behind it, he expands with the sentence: “That’s right. Many also don’t know that the Whatsapp founders (Jan Koum and Brian Acton, note. d. Red.) Left Meta in disgust and both started the #deletefacebook campaign and are big supporters of Signal.” He adds: “What they found out about Facebook and the changes to Whatsapp obviously worried them a lot.”
Musk has a point in that — Brian Acton split from Whatsapp back in September 2017, and Jan Koum left in April the following year. Both disagreed with the direction that new owner Facebook wanted to take.
Whatsapp suspects a bug – and Google confirms it
However, it is doubtful whether a wiretapping scandal can be knit from his employee’s microphone protocol. After Musk gave Dabiri’s tweet a stage, Whatsapp also reacted.
The official statement reads as follows: “We believe there is a bug in Android that is misattributing information in the Privacy Dashboard and have asked Google to investigate and fix this.” It continues: “Users have full control over their microphone settings. Once permission is granted, WhatsApp will only access the microphone when a user makes a call or records a voice memo or video – and even then, that communication is through protected by end-to-end encryption so Whatsapp cannot hear you.”
In the meantime, Google has confirmed what Whatsapp put forward as an assumption. The company explained to several media outlets, including Engadget, that there is actually a bug in the Android operating system that “produces incorrect displays and notifications in the data protection dashboard”. It goes on to say that they are currently working on a solution.
Dabiri is also not the first user to notice the strange recording of microphone access. A month ago, the Whatsapp specialist blog “WABetaInfo” explained that I was dealing with an error. But at that time the message had not reached a comparable reach. Meanwhile, there are no comparable reports from iPhone users, which further underpins an Android bug as the cause.
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Musk has made no further comments on the official statements made by those responsible. This could also be related to the fact that the tech billionaire could have an interest in discrediting Whatsapp.
Twitter recently announced that direct messages are now encrypted. Should Twitter actually serve as the basis for Musk’s long-announced “everything app” “X”, he is dependent on as many people as possible using his platform. A bad reputation of other programs therefore plays into its hands.
The timing of Musk’s tirade is not entirely fortunate. Because just a few days ago, Twitter admitted to a security hole that made it possible for protected tweets to be public and readable by all users – even though the authors had actually limited the group of recipients. “We understand the risks that such an incident can entail and we deeply regret this incident,” Twitter said sheepishly.
Sources: Twitter [1], Twitter [2], Twitter [3], Twitter [4], Engadget, Twitter [5], Guardians