WhatsApp Encryption Under Fire in New Lawsuit

A lawsuit filed in a San Francisco US district court alleges that WhatsApp's widely promoted end-to-end encryption is fundamentally flawed. The complaint, brought forth by users from Australia, Mexico, and South Africa, claims that Meta employees can access user messages through an internal request system.

According to the lawsuit, a simple internal 'task' sent to a Meta engineer can grant access to specific user messages. This alleged access bypasses encryption, allowing employees to view messages in real-time, even those users believed to be deleted. The complaint also suggests Meta uses non-disclosure agreements to suppress such information.

Meta has strongly refuted these allegations, stating that any claims of compromised encryption are "categorically false and absurd." The tech giant asserted that WhatsApp has utilized end-to-end encryption via the Signal protocol for a decade and described the lawsuit as a "frivolous work of fiction."

This legal action follows a 2021 report by ProPublica that examined how WhatsApp's support team could access manually reported messages, and a separate lawsuit by WhatsApp's former head of security regarding alleged cybersecurity failures.