An international group of plaintiffs sued US tech firm Meta Platforms alleging that the company has made false claims about the privacy and security of its WhatsApp chat service. However, in a lawsuit filed in US District Court in San Francisco, the group of plaintiffs allege that Meta’s privacy claims are false. They allege that Meta and WhatsApp “store, analyze, and can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications” — and accuse the companies and their leaders of defrauding WhatsApp’s billions of users worldwide. A spokesperson for Meta, which acquired WhatsApp in 2014, called the lawsuit “frivolous” and said that the company “will pursue sanctions against plaintiffs’ counsel.”“Any claim that people’s WhatsApp messages are not encrypted is categorically false and absurd,” spokesperson Andy Stone said in an email. “WhatsApp has been end-to-end encrypted using the Signal protocol for a decade.

Source: Irish Examiner January 25, 2026 15:39 UTC