Elon Musk, Pavel Durov Slam WhatsApp As Lawsuit Claims Private Chats Were Leaked

Elon Musk and Pavel Durov have publicly questioned WhatsApp’s privacy practices after a class-action lawsuit was filed against Meta, the platform’s parent company. The lawsuit alleges that Meta and its partner, Accenture, accessed users’ private messages without their consent, despite WhatsApp’s claims of end-to-end encryption. Musk simply stated, “Can’t trust WhatsApp,” while Durov went further, calling WhatsApp’s encryption “the biggest consumer fraud in history” and asserting that the platform shares user messages with third parties – a practice Telegram, he claims, has never engaged in.

The lawsuit, filed on April 7th, claims that internal teams and contractors at Meta and Accenture intercepted, shared, and stored confidential user messages. Plaintiffs Brian Y. Shirazi and Nida Samson argue that WhatsApp misrepresented itself as a secure, end-to-end encrypted platform. Whistleblower accounts support these claims, indicating employees and contractors were able to access encrypted message content.

The plaintiffs are seeking to represent a nationwide class of WhatsApp users and accuse Meta and Accenture of breaching contract, violating California privacy laws, false advertising, fraud, and unfair competition. They represent users who sent and received messages between April 5, 2016, and the present.

(Source：Times Now)