Billionaire Elon Musk slammed Meta's WhatsApp Messenger on Tuesday, saying the messenger "cannot be trusted."
The Twitter chief was responding to a May 6 tweet from the social media company's director of engineering Foad Dabiri.
"WhatsApp has been using the microphone in the background, while I was asleep and since I woke up at 6 a.m. (and that's just a part of the timeline!) What's going on?" Dabiri tweeted, later noting for one user that he has a Google Pixel 7 Pro.
Musk initially replied that it was "weird," but retweeted the post two days later.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., departs court in San Francisco, California, on Jan. 24, 2023. (Photographer: Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
"WhatsApp cannot be trusted," he said in a quote tweet.
WhatsApp did not respond to Musk directly, but did reply to Dabiri on Twitter. Meta pointed FOX Business to a series of tweets.
"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," it said.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Signage outside Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on April 20, 2023. (Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
"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," WhatsApp added.
Meta also pointed to a tweet from WABetaInfo, an account that provides news and real-time updates about WhatsApp.
WABetaInfo said it had previously reported that "this is a false positive from the OS, and some users told it happened after a certain patch – some other apps may experience the same issue."