{"id":257861,"date":"2026-05-28T07:24:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T11:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/client-alert-texas-v-meta-and-whatsapp-a-new-front-in-the-battle-over-encryption-privacy-marketing-and-consumer-protection-shumaker-loop-kendrick-llp\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T11:31:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T15:31:19","slug":"client-alert-texas-v-meta-and-whatsapp-a-new-front-in-the-battle-over-encryption-privacy-marketing-and-consumer-protection-shumaker-loop-kendrick-llp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/client-alert-texas-v-meta-and-whatsapp-a-new-front-in-the-battle-over-encryption-privacy-marketing-and-consumer-protection-shumaker-loop-kendrick-llp\/","title":{"rendered":"Client Alert: Texas v. Meta and WhatsApp: A New Front in the Battle Over Encryption, Privacy Marketing, and Consumer Protection | Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Client Alert: Texas v. Meta and WhatsApp: A New Front in the Battle Over Encryption, Privacy Marketing, and Consumer Protection | Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.jdsupra.com\/legalnews\/client-alert-texas-v-meta-and-whatsapp-2979500\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-28 07:24:00<\/a><\/p>\n

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

On May 21, 2026, the Texas Attorney General filed suit against Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta) and WhatsApp, LLC (WhatsApp) in the 71st Judicial District Court of Harrison County. The complaint, brought under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices, Consumer Protection Act (DTPA), Tex. Bus. & Com. Code Ann. \u00a7 17.41 et seq., alleges that Meta and WhatsApp engaged in false, misleading, and deceptive acts and practices by representing to consumers that WhatsApp communications were fully private and inaccessible, even to WhatsApp and Meta, when, in fact, the defendants allegedly could access plaintext communications in at least some circumstances.<\/p>\n

The Core Allegation: A Gap Between Promise and Practice<\/h3>\n

WhatsApp\u2019s marketing has long been emphatic: \u201cYour privacy is our priority. With end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp, your personal messages, photos, calls and more stay between you and the people you choose, meaning not even WhatsApp can see them.\u201d Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reinforced this claim in sworn testimony before the United States Senate, asserting that \u201cwe do not see any of the content in WhatsApp, it\u2019s fully encrypted . . . . Facebook systems do not see the content of messages being transferred over WhatsApp.\u201d Every WhatsApp chat features a banner at the top of the screen reinforcing the message that conversations are end-to-end encrypted.<\/p>\n

However, the petition alleges that these assurances are false. Citing a special agent for the Office of Export Enforcement within the Commerce Department\u2019s Bureau of Industry and Security, the complaint reports that the agent examined claims that Meta employees and contractors had the capability to view WhatsApp message content and concluded those claims were meritorious. According to reporting referenced in the petition, \u201cMeta stores and can view WhatsApp messages\u201d and \u201cMeta can and does view and store all the text messages, photographs, audio, and video recordings\u201d in an \u201cunencrypted format.\u201d The…<\/p>\n

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

Client Alert: Texas v. Meta and WhatsApp: A New Front in the Battle Over Encryption,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":257862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/jdsupra-static.s3.amazonaws.com\/profile-images\/og.7704_1514.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257861","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\/257861"}],"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=257861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257863,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257861\/revisions\/257863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}