Meta is being sued over WhatsApp — why
A group of international plaintiffs is suing Meta Platforms, Inc., claiming the company misled users about the privacy and security of WhatsApp chats. Meta denies the allegations and calls the lawsuit a fabrication.
Bloomberg reports on this.
What are the details of the claims regarding "end-to-end" encryption?
WhatsApp has promoted this feature as one of its key offerings for years. This format means that messages should only be accessible to the sender and recipient, not the platform itself. The app also states that "only participants of this chat can read, listen to, or share" messages.
However, in a lawsuit filed on Friday, January 23, plaintiffs claim that these statements are false. The plaintiffs accuse Meta and WhatsApp of storing, analyzing, and accessing virtually all communications that users consider private. They call this practice a deception of billions of people worldwide.
The plaintiffs are individuals from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa. The lawsuit mentions the alleged storage of message content and the possibility of employees accessing it. The lawsuit mentions "whistleblowers" but does not explain who they are.
Meta, which acquired WhatsApp in 2014, responded sharply. Spokesman Andy Stone called the lawsuit "baseless" and said that Meta would seek sanctions against the plaintiffs' lawyers in a letter. Stone said that the claim that WhatsApp messages are not encrypted is "categorically false and absurd" and that the service has used end-to-end encryption based on the Signal protocol for ten years.
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