Judge Dismisses WhatsApp Whistleblower Retaliation Claims

Attaullah Baig has served as a security leader at WhatsApp and filed claims that the company had serious cybersecurity gaps. The complaint was filed in federal court, and it says about 1,500 engineers had broad access to user data. The filing also alleges that roughly 100,000 accounts were being compromised daily, and plaintiffs say WhatsApp serves billions of users worldwide. U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler was assigned to review the case.

On March 23, 2026, Judge Beeler dismissed Baig’s retaliation claims and found he had not plausibly shown that he reported securities or wire fraud. The judge dismissed the case without prejudice but ruled that most individual claims lacked adequate factual support. Baig had filed an OSHA complaint in January 2025 and said he was fired shortly after. Although the complaint raised broad privacy concerns, the court said the legal elements for protection under the Sarbanes-Oxley provision were not met. A separate class action was filed on January 23, 2026 and seeks to represent at least three billion WhatsApp users. Meta has denied the allegations and called the claims meritless.