Meta is facing a new lawsuit that challenges its claims about the privacy of WhatsApp messages.
A group of plaintiffs says the company has misled users by saying their chats are fully private and secure.
They allege that Meta and WhatsApp “store, analyse, and can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications."
Meta is facing a new lawsuit that challenges its claims about the privacy of WhatsApp messages. An international group of plaintiffs says the company has misled users by saying their chats are fully private and secure. The lawsuit was filed in US District Court in San Francisco. The plaintiffs come from several countries, including Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa. They argue that Meta’s public statements about WhatsApp’s “end-to-end” encryption are false.
SurveyEnd-to-end encryption is a system that, according to WhatsApp, allows only the sender and the receiver to read a message. The company says even it cannot see the content. WhatsApp also tells users inside the app that “only people in this chat can read, listen to, or share” THE messages, and that this protection is turned on by default.
However, the plaintiffs claim this is not true. In their complaint, they allege that Meta and WhatsApp “store, analyse, and can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications,” reports Bloomberg. They accuse the company and its leaders of misleading and defrauding billions of users around the world.
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The lawsuit also claims that Meta employees can access the substance of users’ messages. The complaint says this information came from “whistleblowers,” though it does not give details about who those people are or how they obtained the information.
Meta strongly denies the accusations. A company spokesperson called the lawsuit baseless and said Meta plans to fight back. “Any claim that people’s WhatsApp messages are not encrypted is categorically false and absurd,” spokesperson Andy Stone said. “WhatsApp has been end-to-end encrypted using the Signal protocol for a decade. This lawsuit is a frivolous work of fiction.”
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The plaintiffs’ lawyers are asking the court to allow the case to move forward as a class-action lawsuit, the report said.
Meta bought WhatsApp in 2014 and has often pointed to privacy and encryption as key features of the messaging service. The case could raise major questions about how private encrypted messaging services really are.
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Ayushi Jain
Ayushi works as Chief Copy Editor at Digit, covering everything from breaking tech news to in-depth smartphone reviews. Prior to Digit, she was part of the editorial team at IANS. View Full Profile
