this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2025
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Attaullah Baig, ex-head of security at WhatsApp, sues Meta for allegedly ignoring critical security flaws, claims Meta staffers could access sensitive user data (www.theregister.com)
submitted 1 week ago by nunesgh@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37120773

Complaint.

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[โ€“] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I would not be surprised if WhatsApp, since it's been run by Meta, has been secretly gathering heaps of user data and tying those identifiers to their account data - regardless of if chats are truly still encrypted E2E or not. This complaint doesn't seem to discuss user chat data explicitly?

It seems more like complaints of legal requirements being ignored after repeatedly being raised through internal channels to management, for years - eg GDPR, California Data Privacy Laws, etc being singled out as being breached.

This part stuck out to me though, as it seems very implausible to be true.

"Approximately 100,000 WhatsApp users daily suffered account takeovers with access to Covered Information, yet WhatsApp failed to implement adequate preventive measures."

There are approx. 2 billion WhatsApp users. If 100,000 users daily are getting their accounts taken over, literally every account would be taken over in just five and a half years - and these complaints seem to date to 2022. I'm sure more noise would be getting made if that many users were suffering account takeovers daily? I've actually never heard of an account takeover and i know many dozens of Whatsapp users, though i stopped using it myself years ago after the Meta takeover. On its face this claim seems like a gross over-exaggeration?

[โ€“] thatonecoder@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Perhaps the people who have access to those accounts conceal themselves, to collect further information (hmm, who LOVES blackmail material, I wonder?)