Indian Govt Will Investigate WhatsApp’s Privacy Breach: IT Minister

New Delhi:According to Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the government will be investigating claims that WhatsApp accessed smartphone users’ microphones while the devices were not in use.

The government will investigate the alleged invasion of privacy, the minister wrote in a tweet as the new Digital Personal Data Protection Bill was being prepared.

This came after a user complained that WhatsApp had accessed his microphone while he was sleeping.

“WhatsApp has been using the microphone in the background, while I was asleep and since I woke up at 6 AM,” Foad Dabiri, an engineering director at Twitter said on Saturday. “What’s going on?” Replying to Dabiri’s tweet, Chandrasekhar said, “This is an unacceptable breach and violation of privacy.” “We will be examining this immediately and will act on any violation of privacy even as the new Digital Personal Data Protection bill is being readied,” he added.

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.@GoI_MeitY @_DigitalIndia https://t.co/vtFrST4bKP

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) May 10, 2023

The tweet from Dabiri had over 65 million views after going viral.

WhatsApp reacted by stating that it has spoken with the Twitter developer who had reported a problem with his Pixel phone and WhatsApp over the previous 24 hours.

“We believe this is a bug on Android that misattributes information in their Privacy Dashboard and have asked Google to investigate and remediate,” WhatsApp said in a tweet.

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. https://t.co/MnBi3qE6Gp

— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) May 9, 2023

Separately, Indian WhatsApp users have reported a sharp increase in receiving spam calls from abroad in recent days. The majority of these spam calls included country codes from Indonesia (+62), Vietnam (+84), Malaysia (+60), Kenya (+254), and Ethiopia (+251), according to numerous individuals on Twitter.

India is the company’s largest market, with over 487 million users of WhatsApp.