• Users accuse Meta of accessing WhatsApp messages
• Company denies and insists all chats are fully secure

A new legal petition accuses Meta, owner of WhatsApp, of being able to access users’ private conversations, despite the app promoting them as fully protected by end-to-end encryption.

According to the lawsuit, filed in a federal court in San Francisco, a group of users from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa claim that Meta and WhatsApp are misleading billions of users about the true level of chat security.

The plaintiffs allege the company can store, analyze, and access most private messages, citing Meta’s technical infrastructure and authority to access data, along with whistleblower reports stating employees can view user information when needed.

Meta has categorically denied the allegations, describing the lawsuit as baseless. Company spokesperson Andy Stone said claims questioning WhatsApp’s encryption are "false and absurd," emphasizing that the app has relied on the Signal Protocol for over a decade, recognized globally as a trusted security standard.

Meta added it will take legal action against the plaintiffs’ lawyer, calling the lawsuit “fiction.” The complaint argues that WhatsApp’s claim that only the sender and receiver can read messages is inaccurate, which the company rejects entirely.

India is among the countries involved, along with Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa. If the court approves it as a class-action suit, millions of users worldwide could be affected, and Meta may face significant fines.

WhatsApp maintains that all chats are fully encrypted, meaning messages are converted into codes only the recipient’s device can decode, and the company cannot read them. The new lawsuit questions this assertion.

This case comes amid Meta’s controversial privacy record, including a $5 billion fine in 2020 following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and 2025 claims by a former WhatsApp security official about widespread engineer access to user data.