According to TechSpot, a new international lawsuit was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging Meta misled billions of users about WhatsApp’s privacy. The plaintiffs, from countries including Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa, claim Meta can “store, analyze, and access” messages that are supposed to be end-to-end encrypted. They want the case treated as a global class action. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone called the claims “categorically false and absurd,” stating WhatsApp has used the Signal protocol for a decade and that the lawsuit is a “frivolous work of fiction.” The company says it intends to seek sanctions against the plaintiffs’ legal team.
The core claim
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just another privacy lawsuit. It’s attacking the fundamental promise WhatsApp has built its brand on. The suit alleges that Meta’s own internal infrastructure creates a backdoor, allowing the company to retain and examine message content that should be mathematically inaccessible to anyone but the sender and receiver. That’s a direct challenge to the “end-to-end” part of end-to-end encryption. And it’s reportedly based on info from unnamed whistleblowers, which adds intrigue but also a big question mark. What evidence do they actually have?
Meta’s defense and why it matters
Meta’s defense is straightforward and technical: we use the Signal protocol. That’s not a trivial point. In the world of cryptography, the Signal protocol is the gold standard. It’s what the ultra-private Signal app itself uses. It relies on asymmetric encryption and forward secrecy, which are fancy terms meaning it’s designed to be unbreakable in real-time and to protect past messages if a key is compromised. So if the protocol is sound and implemented correctly, Meta shouldn’t be able to read messages. But that’s the billion-user question, isn’t it? Implementation is everything. A secure lock on a door doesn’t matter if someone made a copy of the key.
The stakes are incredibly high
This case has implications far beyond whether your aunt’s gossip is safe. If the plaintiffs’ claims prove accurate—and that’s a huge “if” right now—it would shatter trust in one of the world’s most popular communication tools. But more broadly, it would challenge how all encryption is audited and communicated. Companies love to say “end-to-end encrypted” as a magic privacy incantation. This lawsuit forces us to ask: what does that actually mean for their servers, their employees, and their data practices? The outcome could redefine privacy promises for the entire tech industry. For now, we’re left with a fierce denial, serious allegations, and a whole lot of users wondering who to believe.
