AfriPulse
Messaging application WhatsApp has come out to clarify explosive claims alleging a massive breach of users’ data, including reports of the alleged leak of people’s private chats.
This follows the circulation of reports and a lawsuit accusing the application’s parent company, Meta, of reportedly misleading users about the privacy of its messaging platform.
The controversy began after posts widely shared on social media claimed that Meta whistleblowers had revealed that WhatsApp could read users’ private messages despite a promise of end-to-end encryption.
A lawsuit filed in a U.S. court further alleged that Meta falsely assured billions of users worldwide that their WhatsApp communications were fully private.
An image of the WhatsApp official logo.
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In response to the allegations, WhatsApp has distanced itself from the viral reports and issued a public statement labelling the claims as false and misleading.
In a statement on Tuesday, January 27, WhatsApp noted that messages are protected using the open-source Signal protocol, an encryption standard also used by other secure messaging platforms.
According to WhatsApp, encryption happens directly on a user’s device before any message is sent and can only be decrypted by the intended recipient.
“Your WhatsApp messages are private. We use the open-source Signal protocol to encrypt them. Encryption happens on your device. Messages are encrypted before leaving your device,” WhatsApp clarified.
“Only the intended recipient has the keys to decrypt messages. The message encryption keys are not accessible to WhatsApp or Meta. Any claims to the contrary are false,” it added.
Meanwhile, in the lawsuit filed against the WhatsApp application, the platform’s parent company is said to have made false representations about WhatsApp’s privacy and security practices.
In the petition filed on January 23 this year, Meta was accused of allegedly making assurances that created a false sense of security among billions of the platform’s users about their privacy.
As of 2025, WhatsApp had amassed about 3 billion active users, making it the most popular messaging application globally. It is used in over 180 countries and sends about 1.5 trillion messages daily.
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Source: Kenyans.co.ke | Read the Full Story…
