Meta Platforms, Inc. is facing a lawsuit filed by an international group of plaintiffs who allege that the company has misled users about the privacy and security of WhatsApp messages.
The complaint, filed on Friday in a US District Court in San Francisco, accuses Meta of falsely claiming that WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption ensures complete privacy.
The plaintiffs allege that Meta and WhatsApp “store, analyze, and can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications,” undermining the company’s longstanding assurances.
End-to-end encryption is a core feature promoted by WhatsApp, designed to ensure that only the sender and recipient of a message can access its content. The app informs users that “only people in this chat can read, listen to, or share” messages, and that encryption is enabled by default.
The plaintiffs, who include individuals from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa, accuse Meta—acquirer of WhatsApp in 2014—and its executives of defrauding billions of users worldwide through misleading privacy claims. The lawsuit also cites unnamed “whistleblowers” as sources for the allegations.
Meta dismissed the lawsuit as “frivolous.” Spokesperson Andy Stone said in an email,
“Any claim that people’s WhatsApp messages are not encrypted is categorically false and absurd. WhatsApp has used end-to-end encryption via the Signal protocol for a decade. This lawsuit is a frivolous work of fiction.”
The plaintiffs are seeking class action status for the case. Lawyers from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, Keller Postman, and Barnett Legal are representing the group, though several declined to comment on the filing.
The case raises renewed scrutiny of Meta’s privacy practices and the limitations of encryption guarantees in widely used messaging platforms.
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