Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Meta and its messaging app WhatsApp, accusing the companies of misleading Texans about how private their messages really 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 read. “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 alleges company employees and contractors were able to 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 couldn’t independently verify the claim, which Meta denied.
Paxton’s office is asking the court to block the companies from making what it calls “false, misleading, and deceptive” privacy claims and to impose financial penalties under Texas consumer protection laws.
Meta denied the allegations in a statement on Thursday.
“WhatsApp cannot access people’s encrypted communications and any suggestion to the contrary is false,” a company spokesperson said. “We will fight this suit as we continue defending our strong record on protecting people's messages.”
This comes after Meta agreed to pay Texas $1.4 billion in 2024 to settle claims the company unlawfully collected biometric data through facial recognition technology without users’ consent.
