Govt to examine WhatsApp's breach of privacy: Minister

The government will investigate a claim that WhatsApp accessed the microphone of smartphone users while the phone was not in use Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on WednesdayIn a tweet the minister said the government will examine the alleged breach of privacy even as the new Digital Personal Data Protection Bill was being readiedThis followed a claim that WhatsApp accessed a users microphone while he was sleepingWhatsApp has been using the microphone in the background while I was asleep and since I woke up at 6 AM Foad Dabiri an engineering director at Twitter said on Saturday Whats going onReplying to Dabiris tweet Chandrasekhar said This is an unacceptable breach and violation of privacyWe 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 he addedDabiris tweet went viral attracting over 65 million viewsAlso Read WhatsApp working on new feature for android to let group admins moderate their groups betterWhatsApp responded saying it has been in touch with the Twitter engineer over the last 24 hours who posted an issue with his Pixel phone and WhatsAppWe believe this is a bug on Android that misattributes information in their Privacy Dashboard and have asked Google to investigate and remediate WhatsApp said in a tweetThe company also claimed that users have full control over their mic settingsOnce 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 endtoend encryption so WhatsApp cannot hear them it addedThe engineer working with Twitter shared screenshots of his phone which showed WhatsApp accessing and using his handsets microphone at various times even as he was asleepThe screenshots prompted several users including Twitter and Tesla Inc chief Elon Musk to raise concernsWhatsApp cannot be trusted Musk tweeted on the screenshot shared by Dabiri Or that WhatsApp founders left MetaFacebook in disgust started deletefacebook campaign amp made major contributions to building Signal What they learned about Facebook amp changes to WhatsApp obviously disturbed them greatlyWhatsApp has been under scrutiny in India over various issues In October last year the Metaowned messaging app saw a twohour service disruption prompting the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology MeitY to ask the platform to share reasons for the disruptionSeparately WhatsApp users in India have reported a massive surge in incoming international spam calls over the past few days Many users complained on Twitter that a major chunk of these spam calls had country codes belonging to Indonesia 62 Vietnam 84 Malaysia 60 Kenya 254 and Ethiopia 251According to a Statista report there are over 487 million WhatsApp users in India making it the biggest market for the companyThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever