The lawsuit filed on January 23 in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco claims that WhatsApp and Meta have the ability to store and analyze almost all users' 'private' messages. This contradicts the company's statements about the use of end-to-end encryption.
Meta representatives assert that messages are only accessible to the sender and recipient, and the app emphasizes that "only chat participants can read, listen to, or forward them."
However, the plaintiffs, which include citizens from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa, insist that these statements are not true. They claim that Meta does indeed store users' text messages and that its employees can access them. The lawsuit mentions "whistleblowers," whose names are not disclosed, who have confirmed this information. Based on this, the plaintiffs accuse Meta and its management of fraud against billions of WhatsApp users worldwide.
Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta, characterized the lawsuit as "frivolous" and warned of potential sanctions for the plaintiffs' attorneys. He also noted that any claims suggesting that WhatsApp users' messages are not protected by encryption are clearly false and absurd. According to him, WhatsApp has been using the Signal protocol for encryption for the past ten years, and he considers the lawsuit to be "a frivolous work of fiction."
