this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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1211
Lawsuit Alleges That WhatsApp Has No End-to-End Encryption (it.slashdot.org)
submitted 1 day ago by technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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As evidence, the lawsuit cites unnamed "courageous whistleblowers" who allege that WhatsApp and Meta employees can request to view a user's messages through a simple process, thus bypassing the app's end-to-end encryption. "A worker need only send a 'task' (i.e., request via Meta's internal system) to a Meta engineer with an explanation that they need access to WhatsApp messages for their job," the lawsuit claims. "The Meta engineering team will then grant access -- often without any scrutiny at all -- and the worker's workstation will then have a new window or widget available that can pull up any WhatsApp user's messages based on the user's User ID number, which is unique to a user but identical across all Meta products."

"Once the Meta worker has this access, they can read users' messages by opening the widget; no separate decryption step is required," the 51-page complaint adds. "The WhatsApp messages appear in widgets commingled with widgets containing messages from unencrypted sources. Messages appear almost as soon as they are communicated -- essentially, in real-time. Moreover, access is unlimited in temporal scope, with Meta workers able to access messages from the time users first activated their accounts, including those messages users believe they have deleted." The lawsuit does not provide any technical details to back up the rather sensational claims.

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[–] AlfredoJohn@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 day ago

While I agree with you I did just want to point out one thing.

This:

it's mathematically impossible to fake.

Is not entirely true persay, every hashing function does have collisions that can occur. But the likely hood that someone baked an exploit in that kept the application functioning while adding their backdoor all the while somehow creating a hash collision with the original fingerprint is practically zero and honestly if someone did pull that off, fucking hats off because that has to be some sort of math and coding wizard beyond most. I should also point out that the file size would most likely/have to be different so there should be other methods of detecting the compromised build regardless.

Sorry I know that was very pedantic of me but I did want to call that out because its technically possible but the actual likely hood has to be so miniscule its almost irrelevant along with the fact that other tells would surely exist.