By Anjali Sharma
WASHINGTON – Billionaire Elon Musk and Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on Friday have raised fresh concerns about WhatsApp’s privacy practices, after a lawsuit in the United States accused the platform of mishandling user data.
US lawsuit alleged message interception has triggered a sharp response from Musk and Durov, raised fresh questions over WhatsApp’s privacy claims and encryption system.
The remarks came as a class action case filed in a California federal court alleges that WhatsApp intercepted private messages and shared them with third parties, despite promising strong end-to-end encryption.
The case names Meta Platforms, WhatsApp, and consulting firm Accenture among the defendants.
Musk reacted sharply on his platform X, writing that users “can’t trust WhatsApp.”
He also encouraged people to shift to X Chat for messaging and calls claiming it offers “actual privacy.”
Meta has dismissed the allegations, called them baseless.
In a statement, the company said WhatsApp has used the Signal protocol for nearly a decade and that messages remain accessible only to the sender and receiver.
“The claims in this lawsuit are categorically false and absurd. WhatsApp has been end-to-end encrypted using the Signal protocol for a decade so your messages cannot be read by anyone other than the sender and recipient.
Durov backed the criticism. In a social media post, he alleged that WhatsApp’s encryption claims mislead users, adding that Telegram does not access or share user messages.
“WhatsApp’s “encryption” may be the biggest consumer fraud in history deceiving billions of users.” Despite its claims, it reads users’ messages and shares them with third parties.”
According to the complaint, WhatsApp’s marketing suggests that even the platform cannot read user messages.
The plaintiffs argue that this assurance is misleading and that private conversations were accessed and shared.
The lawsuit, filed in January, seeks a jury trial and demands damages along with legal orders to stop the alleged practices.
The dispute also plays out against the backdrop of an ongoing rivalry between Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Musk has frequently criticized Meta’s products since acquiring Twitter, now rebranded as X.
Meta launched Threads in July 2023 as a direct competitor to X.
Musk has promoted his AI chatbot Grok as a rival to Meta’s AI tools.
The rivalry even took a dramatic turn in June 2023 when Musk publicly challenged Zuckerberg to a cage fight, to which Zuckerberg replied, “Send me location.”
