WhatsApp Privacy Lawsuit Alleges Meta Can Access Encrypted Chats

A newly filed U.S. class action takes aim at WhatsApp and its parent company, Meta, over claims that the companies misrepresented how private and secure user messages really are. According to the suit, WhatsApp's messages are marketed as end-to-end encrypted, but the lawsuit alleges Meta and WhatsApp actually store and analyze that content, and that it may be accessible to company employees, contradicting the privacy users were promised. Meta has pushed back hard, calling the allegations "frivolous" and maintaining that WhatsApp has relied on the Signal protocol for years and simply cannot read users' message content. This case is still in its early stages: there's no approved settlement, no compensation fund, no claim deadlines, and no settlement administrator in place yet.