Question on WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption: Claim in the lawsuit – Meta can see your private chats; The company called the allegations fake

Meta, the parent company of the world’s most popular messaging app WhatsApp, is once again under the scanner for privacy concerns. A new lawsuit filed in a federal court in San Francisco claims that the company can even view users’ chats, which it claims are completely secure by describing them as end-to-end encrypted (E2E).

This class-action lawsuit has been filed by a group of users from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa. In a lawsuit filed in an American court, it has been said that Meta and WhatsApp are misleading their billions of users in the name of security.

The petitioners claim that the company has the ability to store, analyze and access almost all private conversations. Whereas Meta has rejected these allegations. The company spokesperson says that this lawsuit is completely baseless and they will seek legal action against the petitioners’ lawyer.

What is the main allegation in the case?

It has been said in the lawsuit that WhatsApp’s claim that only the sender and the recipient can read the messages is actually false. According to the petitioners, Meta has such technology and access that it can see the messages of the users. In this, information has also been given quoting some whistleblowers. Who have claimed that Meta employees can access users’ data if needed.

This lawsuit is a fictional story

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said, ‘The claim that people’s WhatsApp messages are not encrypted is completely false and ridiculous.’ He clarified that WhatsApp has been using Signal protocol for the last decade, which is considered the standard worldwide in terms of security. The company has termed this lawsuit as fiction.

Users from 5 countries complained

India is also involved in this legal action. Apart from India, users from Australia, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa are part of this class-action suit. If the court approves this as a class-action, then crores of users around the world may come under the ambit of this lawsuit and Meta may also have to pay a heavy fine in future.

What is end-to-end encryption?

WhatsApp claims that every chat on its app is end-to-end encrypted. This means that when you send a message, it is converted into a secret code that only the receiver’s phone can decode. The company says that neither WhatsApp nor its parent company Meta can read this message. The latest lawsuit has raised questions about the veracity of this claim.

Meta’s privacy policy has been in controversies before also

The privacy record of Meta (formerly Facebook) has been quite controversial. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2020, the company had to pay a fine of $5 billion. Apart from this, in September 2025, former security chief of WhatsApp Ataullah Baig had also alleged that about 1,500 engineers have uncontrolled access to users’ data.

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