San Francisco: Meta Platforms Inc is facing a fresh lawsuit in the United States over its claims that WhatsApp messages are fully private and protected by end-to-end encryption.
According to a Bloomberg report, an international group of plaintiffs has filed the case in the US District Court in San Francisco, accusing Meta of misleading billions of users about the privacy of their WhatsApp communications. The plaintiffs include users from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa.
The lawsuit challenges Meta’s long-standing claim that WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, a system that the company says ensures only the sender and receiver can read messages. WhatsApp repeatedly tells users that “only people in this chat can read, listen to, or share” messages and that this protection is enabled by default.
However, the complainants allege these assurances are false. They claim Meta and WhatsApp “store, analyse and can access virtually all” user communications despite presenting them as private. The lawsuit accuses the company and its leadership of deceiving users worldwide.
Meta has strongly denied the allegations. The company says the claims are based on unverified information allegedly provided by anonymous whistleblowers.
Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta, dismissed the lawsuit as “false” and “silly,” saying the company will fight the case in court. He insisted that WhatsApp messages remain fully encrypted and unreadable by Meta employees.
“The idea that people’s WhatsApp messages are not encrypted is completely wrong,” Stone said, adding that WhatsApp has relied on the Signal encryption protocol for over a decade.
The plaintiffs are seeking permission from the court to pursue the case as a class-action lawsuit.
Meta has frequently defended its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp by pointing to its focus on user privacy and encryption. If the case proceeds, it could raise serious questions about the privacy claims of encrypted messaging platforms and how much access tech companies really have to user data.