Did you know your private WhatsApp groups were not so private and people could snoop around using a simple Google search? A report had revealed that private WhatsApp group invite links could be found easily on Google, making it possible for anyone to join a group without admin's consent or even get details of group members.
Luckily, the Facebook-owned platform has now resolved the issue and the chats are no longer accessible via Google search. Jane Manchun Wong, a well-known reverse-engineer, posted on Twitter that Facebook has removed the existing WhatsApp group links from Google and also added the "noindex" meta tag on the chat invitation links. A "noindex" tag forbids search engines to index a particular page or digital content.
Facebook-WhatsApp denied fixing the bug in the past
The visibility of private WhatsApp groups on Google came to light recently when the Deutsche Welle journalist Jordan Wildon posted about the issue on Twitter. However, this does not seem like a recent finding. A Twitter user @hackrzvijay claimed that he found the WhatsApp private group chat link bug back in November 2019. He said that he had reported the bug to Facebook but the social media giant denied a bounty and tried to downplay the issue.
He also posted a response letter from Facebook which said that "the links being accessible by anyone was an intentional product decision". Facebook had also put the blame on search engines for indexing the invite URLs. It said that WhatsApp or Facebook "cannot completely control what all search engines, Google, and others, index".
When the story about the availability of WhatsApp private group links on Google search broke out, a WhatsApp spokesperson had told Vice, "Group admins in WhatsApp groups are able to invite any WhatsApp user to join that group by sharing a link that they have generated. Like all content that is shared in searchable, public channels, invite links that are posted publicly on the internet can be found by other WhatsApp users. Links that users wish to share privately with people they know and trust should not be posted on a publicly accessible website."
Threat not averted fully
According to Wong, while the WhatsApp chat groups invite links are now gone from Google search results, "the search results are still listed on other search engines like Yandex, Bing, and DuckDuckGo". Along with screengrabs of the search results still showing the WhatsApp group chat links, she said that this is only the first step.
