Will examine WhatsApp’s breach of privacy, says MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar

In a tweet, the minister of state for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the government would examine the breach even as the new Digital Personal Data Protection Bill was being readied.

“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,” Chandrasekhar said in a tweet.

WhatsApp India did not immediately respond to a mail seeking their response to Chandrasekhar’s tweet.

Earlier this week, an engineer working with Twitter shared screenshots of his phone which showed WhatsApp accessing and using his handset’s microphone at various times even as he was asleep.

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The screenshots prompted several users, including Twitter and Tesla Inc chief Elon Musk, who said WhatsApp’s microphone access was “weird”.

On Tuesday, WhatsApp in a tweet said it had been in touch with the Twitter engineer who had posted the screenshot.

“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,” WhatsApp said in a tweet, adding that users had full control over how WhatsApp accessed mic in the device.

“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,” the company said in another tweet.