{"id":253293,"date":"2026-05-23T08:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T12:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/23\/texas-attorney-general-paxton-sues-whatsapp-for-lying-about-privacy\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T08:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T12:50:10","slug":"texas-attorney-general-paxton-sues-whatsapp-for-lying-about-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/23\/texas-attorney-general-paxton-sues-whatsapp-for-lying-about-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Attor\u00adney Gen\u00ader\u00adal Pax\u00adton Sues What\u00adsApp for \u2018Lying About Pri\u00adva\u00adcy\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas Attor\u00adney Gen\u00ader\u00adal Pax\u00adton Sues What\u00adsApp for \u2018Lying About Pri\u00adva\u00adcy\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/texas-attorney-general-paxton-sues-whatsapp-for-lying-about-privacy<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-23 08:25:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.pcmag.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Meta and WhatsApp, claiming Meta \u201cmisled consumers regarding the strength and scope\u201d of WhatsApp\u2019s privacy protections\u2014though encryption experts have criticized his claims.<\/p>\n

WhatsApp, like Signal, iMessage, and Telegram\u2019s Secret Chats, provides what is called end-to-end (E2EE) encryption. This means that no one, except the two parties involved, can read the messages, including the company providing the messaging service.<\/p>\n

In the official statement, Paxton’s office claims that \u201cinvestigations and insider accounts” have shown Meta’s claims about being unable to access users’ messages to be “blatantly inaccurate.\u201d He goes on to allege that reports suggest WhatsApp employees have been able to access user communications, and that \u201cmessage content can be pulled and viewed after the message has been sent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am suing to protect Texans\u2019 privacy and ensure that WhatsApp by Meta does not mislead Texans by unlawfully accessing private conversations and data,\u201d said Paxton.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit invokes the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act (DTPA), which allows individuals and businesses to sue companies for false, misleading, or deceptive business practices.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Dowling, a senior lecturer in cryptography at King\u2019s College London and a co-author of the study, criticized the claims in an email to Ars Technica. He said following his team\u2019s reverse-engineering of WhatsApp, \u201call the evidence we are aware of points towards WhatsApp providing users with end-to-end encryption for their message contents.\u201d Though he did say his team found \u201cweaknesses in the protocol, such as a lack of user control over things like group membership.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs it stands, we are not aware of any concrete evidence that WhatsApp has broken their promise of end-to-end encryption,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Kenny Paterson, a researcher at ETH Zurich, one of Switzerland’s top-ranked universities, called the \u201cvast…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas Attor\u00adney Gen\u00ader\u00adal Pax\u00adton Sues What\u00adsApp for \u2018Lying About Pri\u00adva\u00adcy\u2019 https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/texas-attorney-general-paxton-sues-whatsapp-for-lying-about-privacy Publish Date: 2026-05-23 08:25:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":253294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/articles\/05lsYYPh6T8m4zS0mu0UlIk-1.fit_lim.size_1200x630.v1779536599.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253295,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253293\/revisions\/253295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}