Stories emerged closing occasion a few trojan horse that made it appear WhatsApp for Android was once all the time the use of the microphone. Google these days said the problem and an easy medication.
In a tweet from the Android Builders account this afternoon, Google cited a “recent Android bug affecting a limited number of WhatsApp users produced erroneous privacy indicators and notifications in the Android Privacy Dashboard.”
Particularly, it gave the impression as though WhatsApp was once repeatedly getting access to an Android tool’s microphone, which might have bulky privateness implications if it have been correct.
On the month, WhatsApp believed it was once a “bug on Android that mis-attributes information in their Privacy Dashboard” instead than the app getting access to the microphone greater than wanted/asked. That tweet asking Google to “investigate and remediate” was once moderately high-profile, with problems like this normally treated without delay between engineering groups. The reaction said to how delicate microphone privateness is, particularly for Meta.
Google confirms as a lot these days and that the medication is updating WhatsApp to the untouched model: “We thank WhatsApp for their partnership and apologize for any confusion this bug may have caused users.”
Thus far, we’re sunny on technical main points of this factor. The viral instance closing occasion took playground on a Pixel, which was once simply up to date to Android 13 QPR3 within the day life. That user-facing changelog makes refuse point out of this factor/medication. Any other risk is that the WhatsApp replace includes a medication and/or mitigation.
We’ve reached out to Google for more info.
Extra on Android:
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