Twitter CEO Elon Musk is planning to bring WhatsApp-like features to Twitter after a Twitter engineer alleged that WhatsApp had been using his microphone in the background while he was sleeping.
He confirmed his plan on May 10 through a tweet, “With latest version of app, you can DM reply to any message in the thread (not just most recent) and use any emoji reaction. Release of encrypted DMs V1.0 should happen tomorrow. This will grow in sophistication rapidly. The acid test is that I could not see your DMs even if there was a gun to my head. Coming soon will be voice and video chat from your handle to anyone on this platform, so you can talk to people anywhere in the world without giving them your phone number”.
Twitter employee Foad Dabiri tweeted a screenshot of an Android dashboard to back up his assertions on May 6. As per the screenshot, it looks like WhatsApp had been using his microphone in the background between 4:20 and 6:53 AM. He said, “WhatsApp has been using the microphone in the background, while I was asleep and since I woke up at 6 AM (and that’s just a part of the timeline!) What’s going on?”.
His tweet has also drawn the attention of his boss Elon Musk. On May 9, he tweeted, “WhatsApp cannot be trusted”.
Musk further tweeted, “Trust nothing, not even nothing”.
On May 10, even the Union Minister of State for Electronics and Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said that this incident is quite alarming as it’s a breach of privacy, and the government will examine it. He tweeted, “This is an unacceptable breach n violation of privacy. We will be examinig this immdtly and will act on any violation of privacy even as new Digital Personal Data protection bill DPDP is being readied.”
On May 10, in response to the Twitter engineer’s claims, WhatsApp clarified the incident: “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”.
The messaging app clarified further, “Users have full control over their mic settings Once 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 end-to-end encryption so WhatsApp cannot hear them”.
Moreover, in the past, WhatsApp has already dealt with privacy issues, such as sharing some user data with its parent firm Meta, including phone numbers, device information, location, and contacts.
Ever since Musk took over Twitter, the company has gone through massive changes, such as launching the Twitter Blue subscription and failing to subscribe cost many users to lose their blue ticks.
