The US Attorney General's Office in Texas has filed a lawsuit against WhatsApp and its owner, Meta, alleging that the messaging app misled users about the privacy and encryption of messages.
According to Reuters, the lawsuit alleges that WhatsApp employees had access to "almost all" of their private messages. The company, however, told users that messages were fully encrypted and secure.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that "WhatsApp presents its services as secure and encrypted, but does not deliver on those promises."
The lawsuit also cites media reports about federal investigations into whether Meta could access unencrypted WhatsApp messages.
The Texas Attorney General is seeking to block Meta and WhatsApp from accessing state residents' messages without their consent, as well as impose financial penalties on the companies.
Meta has denied the charges. A company representative said that WhatsApp does not have access to users' encrypted messages and that the arguments in the lawsuit do not reflect the truth.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov called WhatsApp's encryption policy a "big deception" in his statement on the matter:
"Now we understand what the founder of WhatsApp meant when he said that he was selling users' privacy. Protect yourself - use Telegram," Durov said.
Durov was probably referring to the opinion of WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton in an interview with Forbes in 2018. Acton commented on the sale of WhatsApp to Facebook (now Meta) in 2014:
"I sold the privacy of my users for the sake of greater profit. It was a choice, and I made a compromise."
It should be noted that Texas authorities had previously filed a lawsuit against Netflix for allegedly tracking users, including children.
