Millions of WhatsApp users urged to change a simple setting on their phone

‌If you use WhatsApp and have it installed on an Android device then you might want to change one very simple setting. It was recently discovered that this hugely popular chat service might be suffering from a worrying bug that could allow it to access the microphone on certain devices without the owner knowing. To make matters worse, this flaw even works when the app isn’t open or is being actively used.

The issue was first discovered by Twitter engineer, Foad Dabiri who then posted a picture of what he found on social media. The image reveals that his WhatsApp application was active whilst he was sound asleep and not using his smartphone.

“WhatsApp has been using the microphone in the background, while I was asleep and since I woke up at 6AM (and that’s just a part of the timeline!) What’s going on?,” Dabiri tweeted.

WhatsApp quickly responded to the message with the Meta-owned platform saying, “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.”

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It remains unclear exactly who is at fault or how many phones ate affected but anyone worried by the glitch might now want to turn off mic access within WhatsApp.

To switch things off simply follow these steps…

• Open your phone’s ‘Settings’ app

• Scroll down and tap ‘Privacy’

•Open ‘Permission manager’

• Scroll down to ‘Microphone’ and tap it, then look for ‘WhatsApp’

• You should see a new screen which says ‘Microphone access for this app’ with three options: ‘Allow only while using the app’, ‘Ask every time’, and ‘Don’t allow’.

• Select ‘Ask every time’ or ‘Don’t allow’, but bear in mind that clicking ‘Don’t allow’ will prevent you from sending voice notes and making calls.

Foad Dabiri was using a Pixel device when he spotted the glitch and there’s no current word on whether the issue affects only these Google-made devices or other phones powered by Android.

We expect an update to be released soon so watch this space.