Texas Sues Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Over Alleged Lies About Privacy

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Thursday against Meta and its platform WhatsApp over privacy concerns, alleging the social media giant has lied to and deceived the Lone Star State’s residents.

The lawsuit states that WhatsApp markets its service to use end-to-end encryption, which means only the sender and receiver can access the messages. However, insider accounts have reported claims of the Mark Zuckerberg-founded Meta presenting WhatsApp as encrypted to be false according to the suit and a Thursday press release from Paxton’s office.

“WhatsApp markets its services as secure and encrypted, but it does not deliver on those promises. I am suing to protect Texans’ privacy and ensure that WhatsApp by Meta does not mislead Texans by unlawfully accessing private conversations and data,” Paxton said in his press release.

Paxton is bringing these claims under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act for WhatsApp allegedly misleading users by claiming that their conversations are encrypted, the Texas Tribune reported.

“With end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp, your personal messages and calls are secured with a lock. Only you and the person you’re talking to can read or listen to them, and no one else, not even WhatsApp,” WhatsApp states