An international group of plaintiffs has filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta Platforms in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, accusing the company of misleading WhatsApp users.
Plaintiffs from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa claim that Meta made misleading statements about privacy and the level of data protection. According to the lawsuit, the company stores the content of users’ messages on WhatsApp, and Meta employees are able to access them. The filing says this information became known through “whistleblowers,” whose identities are not disclosed.
Meta has rejected the lawsuit, calling it “baseless,” and said it intends to seek sanctions against the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
“Any claim that WhatsApp users’ messages are not encrypted is categorically false and absurd,” said Meta spokesperson Andy Stone. According to him, WhatsApp has used end-to-end encryption based on the Signal protocol for ten years.