If you’ve recently noticed WhatsApp going haywire with privacy notifications on your Galaxy device, fret not, as the Meta-owned messaging app isn’t spying on you, says Google. According to the tech giant, an Android bug affected a limited number of WhatsApp users, wherein they were receiving erroneous privacy indicators and notifications.
Since Android 12, device users — including Galaxy phone and tablet owners — can see if an app uses the microphone or camera through a privacy indicator in the status bar and notification area. Recently, users noticed privacy indicators suggesting that WhatsApp was using the microphone without permission (via 9to5Google). But by the sound of it, these indicators were shown erroneously, meaning that the microphone wasn’t actually in use when the notifications popped up. No audio was recorded or sent through the WhatsApp servers.
Google confirmed (via @AndroidDev) that it was due to a bug but didn’t go into further detail as to how the error occurred. Nevertheless, Google addressed the issue in partnership with WhatsApp and affected users should download the latest version of the messaging app to make the problem go away.
We haven’t encountered this issue on any of our Samsung devices, but it sounds like the problem affected Android OS with or without One UI running on top of it. Thankfully, the bug seemingly had a limited reach. Yet it probably caused some real concerns for those affected. If you want to make sure this doesn’t happen to you, head over to the Play Store and get the latest WhatsApp version for your phone or tablet.
