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Earlier this week, WhatsApp was accused of using the phone’s mic without getting permission from the user. Many people lashed out at the messaging app, Elon Musk stated WhatsApp is not secure and some of you even wanted action against WhatsApp because of this privacy breach.

In its defence, Meta, the company which owns WhatsApp claimed that a bug in Android caused this problem, which meant that the messaging app wasn’t at fault for this action. Turns out they were right after all. Google has confirmed that there is a bug in Android which is causing the incorrect privacy alerts for WhatsApp using your phone’s microphone.

“Based on our current investigation, this reported bug in Android affecting WhatsApp users produces incorrect privacy indicators and notifications in the Privacy Dashboard,” Google spokesperson has been quoted saying by Engadget in this report.

The company also says it is working on fixing the issue. WhatsApp does face a lot of scrutiny, and rightly so. It has over a billion daily users active on the platform, and in India itself it has over 400 million users. Ever since Facebook (now Meta) bought WhatsApp, there have been concerns regarding the direction in which the messaging app will grow.

For instance, WhatsApp now has more spam than ever. It also has a different Business account that is used by companies to connect with their customers. You also get tracking details from brands, which usually should be done with the user’s consent but that doesn’t happen often.

We personally went through the digital dashboard to see if WhatsApp is giving similar access alerts on our device as well but we didn’t find anything suspicious or concerning in that regard. Either way, it is good to see Google quickly share the update regarding this problem, which helps WhatsApp mitigate the criticism it has been getting on social media this week.