‘Totally false’: WhatsApp Chief rejects claims Meta can read private messages

WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart called out claims that Meta can secretly read user’s private texts and information, calling it “totally false” and took a dig at Elon Musk and a lawsuit filed by him where he says was filed by lawyers who previously defended spyware company NSO Group.

The response of Cathcart came hours after Musk posted on X that “Whatsapp is not secure. Even Signal is questionable. Use X Chat.”

WhatsApp is not secure. Even Signal is questionable.

Use 𝕏 Chat. https://t.co/MWXCOmkbTD

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 27, 2026

"WhatsApp can’t read messages because the encryption keys are stored on your phone and we don’t have access to them," Cathcart wrote on X.

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“This is a no-merit, headline-seeking lawsuit brought by the very same firm defending NSO after their spyware attacked journalists and government officials,” he added.  

This is totally false. WhatsApp can’t read messages because the encryption keys are stored on your phone and we don’t have access to them. This is a no-merit, headline-seeking lawsuit brought by the very same firm defending NSO after their spyware attacked journalists and…

— Will Cathcart (@wcathcart) January 27, 2026

The lawsuit made claims that Meta employees can easily violate anyone’s private messages through an internal system – essentially bypassing the encryption that WhatsApp has marketed as its core privacy feature for nearly a decade.

According to the 51-page filing, workers allegedly need only send a “task” to a Meta engineer, who then grants access to a widget that pulls up messages “almost in real-time” based on a user’s ID number.  

The plaintiffs claim this access is “unlimited in temporal scope,” stretching back to when users first activated their accounts.  

The lawsuit does not come with any technical evidence and can be a defamation charge or act. It mentions “courageous whistleblowers” without identifying them or explaining how they obtained this information.

Meta has threatened sanctions against the plaintiff’s legal claim. “WhatsApp has been end-to-end encrypted using the Signal protocol for a decade. This lawsuit is a frivolous work of fiction,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said.

Stone has called out the allegations as “absurd and false.”