Meta is back in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, as a group of plaintiffs has launched a lawsuit in San Francisco claiming that WhatsApp’s famous privacy isn’t quite what it says on the app.
The group, which includes people from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa, alleges that Meta is making false claims about its encryption. They reckon that the company actually stores the substance of users’ chats and that employees can have a look at them whenever they fancy.
The complaint mentions some mysterious whistleblowers who have supposedly helped bring these details to light, although it doesn’t actually specify who these people are. This is a pretty massive claim considering Meta has made end-to-end encryption the very centre of the WhatsApp experience.
We’ve all seen those little bubbles in our chats telling us that only the people in the conversation can read or listen to the messages, but this lawsuit suggests that’s all just a bit of theatre.
According to the group, Meta and WhatsApp are actually storing and analysing virtually all of our supposedly private communications. They’ve gone as far as accusing the tech giant and its top brass of defrauding billions of users across the globe.
Unsurprisingly, Meta isn’t exactly thrilled about the accusations. A spokesperson for the company called the lawsuit frivolous and even suggested they would be going after the plaintiffs’ lawyers for sanctions.
A representative for Meta was saying that any claim that messages aren’t encrypted is categorically false and absurd. He pointed out that WhatsApp has been using the Signal protocol for a decade and dismissed the entire legal filing as a work of fiction.