🚨Texas sues Meta over ‘misleading’ WhatsApp privacy claims
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Meta and its messaging app WhatsApp, accusing them of misleading Texans about how private their messages are.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday, claims WhatsApp falsely told users their messages were protected by end-to-end encryption, meaning only the sender and recipient could read them. The state argues Meta and WhatsApp still had ways to access some user messages despite those promises.
“WhatsApp’s assurances are false,” the lawsuit said. “WhatsApp and its parent company, Meta, have access to virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications.”
According to court records, Paxton alleges WhatsApp marketed itself as a secure messaging app by telling users that “not even WhatsApp” could see their conversations. But the lawsuit claims company employees and contractors could review certain messages.
The lawsuit also cites a Bloomberg report from April about a federal investigation into WhatsApp’s privacy claims. According to the report, a Commerce Department investigator concluded there was “no limit” to the type of WhatsApp messages Meta could access. Bloomberg said it could not independently verify the claim, which Meta denied.
Paxton’s office is asking the court to block what it calls “false, misleading, and deceptive” privacy claims and impose financial penalties under Texas consumer protection laws.
Meta denied the allegations Thursday.
“WhatsApp cannot access people’s encrypted communications and any suggestion to the contrary is false,” a spokesperson said. “We will fight this suit as we continue defending our strong record on protecting people’s messages.”
The lawsuit follows Meta’s 2024 agreement to pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle claims it unlawfully collected biometric data through facial recognition technology without users’ consent.
