An international group of plaintiffs, including South Africans, sued Meta Platforms, Inc., alleging that the company has made false claims about the privacy and security of its WhatsApp chat service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meta has made so-called \u201cend-to-end\u201d encryption a central part of WhatsApp\u2019s feature set, offering a kind of encryption that means a message is only accessible to the sender and recipient, but not the company.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this kind of encrypted chat, which the company says is enabled by default, WhatsApp\u2019s in-app messaging says, \u201cOnly people in this chat can read, listen to, or share\u201d the messages.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the lawsuit filed Friday in US District Court in San Francisco, the group of plaintiffs allege that Meta\u2019s privacy claims are false. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They allege that Meta and WhatsApp \u201cstore, analyse, and can access virtually all of WhatsApp users\u2019 purportedly \u2018private\u2019 communications\u201d \u2014 and accuse the companies and their leaders of defrauding WhatsApp\u2019s billions of users worldwide.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A spokesperson for Meta, which acquired WhatsApp in 2014, called the lawsuit \u201cfrivolous\u201d and said that the company \u201cwill pursue sanctions against plaintiffs\u2019 counsel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAny claim that people\u2019s WhatsApp messages are not encrypted is categorically false and absurd,\u201d spokesperson Andy Stone said in an email. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhatsApp has been end-to-end encrypted using the Signal protocol for a decade. This lawsuit is a frivolous work of fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group, which includes plaintiffs from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa, alleges that Meta stores the substance of users\u2019 communications and that workers can get access to them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The complaint cites \u201cwhistleblowers\u201d as having helped bring this information to light, though it doesn\u2019t explain who they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lawyers for the plaintiffs are asking the court to certify a class-action suit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Multiple attorneys listed in the suit from the firms of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Keller Postman didn\u2019t immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another one of the plaintiff\u2019s lawyers, Jay Barnett, from Barnett Legal, declined to comment Saturday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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