Meta can access all WhatsApp chats, lawsuit claims; Company replies

An international group of plaintiffs has reportedly filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta-owned WhatsApp, accusing the company of defrauding billions of users by allegedly maintaining ‘backdoor’ access to private communications that the company claims are “end-to-end encryption” (E2EE). Filed in the US District Court for Northern California, the lawsuit challenges Meta’s marketing of E2EE feature, a security standard which the company claims protects the messages on the app and ensures only the sender and recipient can read a message.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the lawsuit claims that Meta’s privacy claims are false as the company WhatsApp “store, analyze, and can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications”.