Lawsuit Against Meta: New Allegations on WhatsApp Privacy

A lawsuit has been filed in federal court in San Francisco against Meta Platforms, where an international group of plaintiffs claims that the company misled WhatsApp users regarding the privacy of their messages. According to Bloomberg, the complaint states that Meta and WhatsApp "store, analyze, and have the ability to access nearly all WhatsApp chats that are marketed as private." The plaintiffs accuse the company and its leadership of fraud against billions of users of the service.
Meta, which acquired WhatsApp in 2014, denied these allegations. Company representative Andy Stone called the lawsuit "ridiculous" and stated that the company would seek sanctions against the plaintiffs' attorneys. He asserted that claims regarding the lack of encryption are "categorically false and absurd." Stone emphasized that WhatsApp has been using the Signal protocol for end-to-end encryption for the past ten years, ensuring that messages are accessible only to the sender and receiver.
The lawsuit was filed by citizens from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa. The document states that Meta retains the content of messages and that company employees can access them. Whistleblowers are cited as sources of information, but their names are not disclosed.
It is also worth noting that the Federal Trade Commission of the United States continues its legal battle against Meta over monopoly in the social media market, insisting that Meta maintains dominance by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp.