Twitter chief, Elon Musk has claimed ‘WhatsApp cannot be trusted’ in a bizarre Tweet.
Musk stated this while responding to one user, Foad Dabiri who claimed WhatsApp had been using the microphone in the background of his phone.
The user wrote: “WhatsApp has been using the microphone in the background, while I was asleep and since I woke up at 6AM (and that’s just a part of the timeline!) What’s going on?”
Mr Musk quote tweeted replying: “WhatsApp cannot be trusted”
Dabiri shared a screenshot of the Android dashboard which showed that microphone access was on for WhatsApp.
WhatsApp cannot be trusted https://t.co/3gdNxZOLLy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 9, 2023
Reacting to the issue, WhatsApp claimed the issue reported was a bug on an Android phone and with its app.
WhatsApp said, “Over the last 24 hours we’ve been in touch with a Twitter engineer who posted an issue with his Pixel phone and WhatsApp. We believe this is a bug on Android that mis-attributes information in their Privacy Dashboard and have asked Google to investigate and remediate.”
On its part Google said its working with WhatsApp to investigate the matter.
“We ar aware of the issue and are working closely with WhatsApp to investigate,”a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
The 51-year-old SpaceX and Tesla boss wanted had openly spoken against WhatsApp and Facebook in the past and urged people to sign up to the privacy-focussed messaging app Signal after Facebook forced users to agree to controversial terms and conditions by February 8.
The conditions saw private data collected by WhatsApp, including a user’s IP address and phone number, shared with Facebook.
WhatsApp had said that it “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,”
Ifunanya Ikueze is an Engineer, Safety Professional, Writer, Investor, Entrepreneur and Educator.