September 9, 2025, 11:41 am | Read time: 2 minutes
Billions of people use WhatsApp daily. The messenger remains the leader in its field. However, serious allegations are now circulating as a once-important figure in the company has sued WhatsApp.
Meta Sued by Former Security Chief Over WhatsApp
This is now reported by outlets such as “CNBC.” According to them, the former security chief of the messenger, Attaullah Baig, has sued the responsible company, Meta (formerly Facebook), over WhatsApp. Months earlier, he lost his position at the company and is now accusing it of several offenses.
Among other things, the lawsuit states that approximately 1,500 employees allegedly have unrestricted access to various user data, including sensitive information. This includes IP addresses, location and contact data, and even profile pictures.
The issue is reportedly so severe that each of these employees could potentially locate an elected official using their location data, while using their IP address to contact other people to obtain their contact number. This situation allegedly violates agreements with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
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Baig emphasizes in his lawsuit that it would theoretically be very easy for one of these 1,500 employees to steal user data from WhatsApp. This could even happen without detection or traceability.
Additionally, Meta is said to be violating GDPR guidelines, as there is no list of all collected user data that the company is required to provide. Furthermore, there is neither the ability to detect access to user data nor to register data leaks. An inventory of data-storing systems is also missing. On top of that, there are reportedly about 100,000 WhatsApp account takeovers by cybercriminals daily, against which little has been done so far.
How Meta Responds to the Lawsuit
Baig began his role at Meta in 2021 and subsequently raised security concerns internally multiple times. He is also said to have proposed countermeasures, which were not acted upon. Instead, the company allegedly turned against him. Later, he was dismissed for supposedly poor performance. Now he has sued Meta over WhatsApp.
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The company has since responded to the allegations in a statement. It describes the claims as “distorted assertions” that misrepresent the “ongoing hard work of our team.” Meta is proud of its “strong record on user privacy security.”