Express : Urge millions of WhatsApp users to change a simple setting on their phones!

WhatsApp users may want to change one of the settings to avoid a disturbing bug that was discovered recently.

If you are using WhatsApp on an Android device, you may want to change one very simple setting. It was recently discovered that this very popular chat service may suffer from a disturbing bug that could allow someone to access the microphone on certain devices without the user's knowledge. To make matters worse, this bug works even when the app is not open or actively used.

The problem was first discovered by Twitter engineer Fouad Dabiri, who then posted a picture of what he found on social media. The image reveals that his WhatsApp was active while he was sleeping and not using his smartphone.

Dabiri tweeted: "WhatsApp was using the microphone in the background while I was sleeping and since I woke up at 6am (and that's just part of the schedule!) what's going on?"

WhatsApp quickly responded to the message through the Meta-owned platform saying, “Over the past 24 hours, we have been in contact with a Twitter engineer who posted an issue with the Pixel phone and WhatsApp.” We believe this is a bug in the operating system. "Android" leads to poor information attributes in their privacy dashboard and we have asked Google to investigate and address it."

It's still not clear exactly where the bug came from or how many phones were affected, but anyone concerned about the bug might now want to turn off microphone access within WhatsApp.

• Open the "Settings" application on your phone.

• Scroll down and tap on "Privacy".

• Open the Permissions Manager.

• Scroll down to "Microphone" and tap on it, then search for "WhatsApp".

• You should see a new screen that says "Access microphone 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 keep in mind that clicking "Don't allow" will prevent you from sending voice notes and making calls.

Fouad Dabiri was using a Pixel device when he discovered the bug and there's no current word on whether the issue only affects these devices made by Google, or other Android phones.