<\/p>
An international group of plaintiffs has filed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms, Inc., claiming the company has made false statements about the privacy and security of WhatsApp messages, according to Bloomberg.\u00a0<\/p>
Meta has long promoted WhatsApp\u2019s \u201cend-to-end\u201d encryption as a key feature. This form of encryption means messages can only be read by the sender and the receiver, not by WhatsApp or Meta. The company says this encryption is turned on by default. WhatsApp also tells users in its app that \u201conly people in this chat can read, listen to, or share\u201d the messages.<\/p>
However, in a lawsuit filed on Friday in a US District Court in San Francisco, the plaintiffs allege that these privacy claims are misleading. They claim that Meta and WhatsApp \u201cstore, analyze, and can access virtually all of WhatsApp users\u2019 purportedly \u2018private\u2019 communications.\u201d The lawsuit accuses the companies and their leaders of defrauding WhatsApp\u2019s billions of users worldwide.<\/p>
Meta has strongly denied the allegations. A spokesperson for the company, which acquired WhatsApp in 2014, called the lawsuit \u201cfrivolous\u201d and said Meta will pursue sanctions against plaintiffs\u2019 counsel.<\/p>
\u201cAny claim that people\u2019s WhatsApp messages are not encrypted is categorically false and absurd,\u201d Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in an email. \u201cWhatsApp has been end-to-end encrypted using the Signal protocol for a decade. This lawsuit is a frivolous work of fiction.\u201d<\/p>
The group of plaintiffs includes users from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa.\u00a0They allege that Meta stores the content of users\u2019 messages and that company employees can access them.<\/p>
The complaint also refers to \u201cwhistleblowers\u201d who allegedly helped reveal this information, but does not provide details about who they are.<\/p>
The plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers have asked the court to certify the case as a class-action lawsuit.<\/p>
\u00a0Several attorneys named in the filing from the firms Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Keller Postman did not respond to requests for comment. Another lawyer representing the plaintiffs, Jay Barnett of Barnett Legal, declined to comment.<\/p> <\/div>
Meta lawsuit, WhatsApp privacy, end-to-end encryption, class-action lawsuit, Meta privacy allegations, WhatsApp security, Meta court case, international plaintiffs, data privacy, digital security#Meta #sued #users #alleged #false #claims #WhatsApp #message #privacy1769326313<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An international group of plaintiffs has filed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms, Inc., claiming the company has made false statements about the privacy and security of WhatsApp messages, according to Bloomberg.\u00a0 Meta has long promoted WhatsApp\u2019s \u201cend-to-end\u201d encryption as a key feature. This form of encryption means messages can only be read by the sender […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4761,2094,5651,5656,5657,5650,5659,5655,1026,166,5654,5648,5652,5660,5658,310,1431,5649,5653],"class_list":["post-2149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content-marketing","tag-alleged","tag-claims","tag-class-action-lawsuit","tag-data-privacy","tag-digital-security","tag-end-to-end-encryption","tag-false","tag-international-plaintiffs","tag-message","tag-meta","tag-meta-court-case","tag-meta-lawsuit","tag-meta-privacy-allegations","tag-privacy","tag-sued","tag-users","tag-whatsapp","tag-whatsapp-privacy","tag-whatsapp-security"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}