Overview
- An international group of users filed the case in San Francisco federal court on January 23, seeking class-action status on behalf of WhatsApp users in Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa.
- The complaint alleges an internal “task” workflow lets staff request and obtain near real-time access to any user’s chats via a widget tied to a unique ID, including messages users believe they deleted.
- Plaintiffs cite unnamed whistleblowers to support the claims, but the filing provides no identities or technical evidence.
- Meta calls the lawsuit frivolous, reiterates that WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol for end-to-end encryption, and WhatsApp head Will Cathcart says encryption keys remain on users’ devices.
- Tech figures amplified the dispute, with Elon Musk urging use of X Chat and Telegram’s Pavel Durov deriding trust in WhatsApp’s security, while the case remains at an early stage with no court rulings.