Meta Platforms, Inc. has been sued by an international group of plaintiffs who allege the company has misled users about the privacy and security of WhatsApp chats.
In a lawsuit filed on Friday at a US District Court in San Francisco, the plaintiffs claim Meta’s repeated assurances that WhatsApp messages are protected by end to end encryption are false. They argue that Meta and WhatsApp “store, analyze, and can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications”.
End to end encryption is a core feature promoted by WhatsApp, which says the system ensures messages are only accessible to the sender and recipient. The app tells users that “only people in this chat can read, listen to, or share” messages, and states the feature is enabled by default.
The plaintiffs accuse Meta, which acquired WhatsApp in 2014, and its executives of defrauding billions of users worldwide by making what they describe as misleading privacy claims.
A Meta spokesperson dismissed the lawsuit, describing it as “frivolous” and saying the company “will pursue sanctions against plaintiffs’ counsel”.
“Any claim that people’s WhatsApp messages are not encrypted is categorically false and absurd,” spokesperson Andy Stone said in an email. “WhatsApp has been end to end encrypted using the Signal protocol for a decade. This lawsuit is a frivolous work of fiction.”
The group of plaintiffs includes individuals from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa. The complaint alleges Meta stores the substance of users’ communications and that company employees can access them.
The filing also references “whistleblowers” as sources of the allegations, though it does not identify them.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs are seeking class action status for the case. Several attorneys listed from the firms Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Keller Postman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Another lawyer representing the plaintiffs, Jay Barnett of Barnett Legal, declined to comment.
Faridah Abdulkadiri
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