Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Meta Platforms and WhatsApp, claiming the messaging app misleads users about how strong its encryption is and whether private messages are really safe from company access.
Texas Attorney General’s Office filed the lawsuit in Harrison County, claiming WhatsApp and Meta misled people about how strong and wide-reaching WhatsApp’s encryption is. Paxton’s office says WhatsApp tells users it offers end-to-end encryption, which should keep messages hidden from everyone except the sender and receiver.
Texas says WhatsApp’s privacy promise is misleading
The lawsuit questions one of WhatsApp’s main selling points: that messages are protected by end-to-end encryption.
Reuters reports that the complaint says WhatsApp and Meta wrongly tell users their messages are encrypted, even though the companies supposedly have access to almost all private messages on the app. The Texas Tribune also says Paxton’s office argues Meta and WhatsApp are misleading users by saying they cannot see encrypted messages.
Paxton said in a statement that “WhatsApp markets its services as secure and encrypted,” but, according to the lawsuit, does not deliver on that promise.
The Texas Tribune also quoted Paxton as saying Texans deserve to know whether their private communications are indeed truly private.
The lawsuit was filed under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which Reuters calls the state’s main consumer protection law. The Texas Tribune says Paxton argues Meta and WhatsApp broke this law by repeatedly claiming their messages are encrypted.
Meta denies the allegations
Meta has rejected the claims.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said on social media that the lawsuit’s allegations are false and that WhatsApp cannot access encrypted communications. Rachel Holland shared that WhatsApp cannot access people’s encrypted communications and that any suggestion otherwise is false.
Meta, which bought WhatsApp in 2014, has always denied it can see private messages sent through the app.
Lawsuit seeks penalties and message-access limits
Texas wants the court to impose both restrictions and penalties.
The lawsuit asks the court to stop Meta and WhatsApp from accessing Texans’ WhatsApp messages without their consent and to impose financial penalties. The filing wants a permanent order blocking the company from viewing users’ messages without consent and a $10,000 fine for each violation of the consumer protection law.
The lawsuit also points to whistleblower-related claims. The complaint cites news reports about a federal investigation into claims that Meta had access to unencrypted WhatsApp messages, as well as a whistleblower report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Paxton’s office cited whistleblowers and a federal Commerce Department investigation that was closed earlier this year.
Paxton expands privacy fight against tech companies
The WhatsApp lawsuit is part of a larger effort by Paxton’s office to challenge big tech companies over data privacy.
Paxton’s office has filed similar data privacy lawsuits against big companies, including Google, which agreed in May 2025 to pay $1.375 billion to settle claims it violated users’ data privacy. Meta agreed in 2024 to pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle a separate lawsuit over facial recognition technology, and that Paxton’s office later secured another $1.4 billion settlement with Google.
Paxton sued Netflix on May 11, accusing the company of collecting users’ data without their knowledge and selling it to data brokers for targeted ads. Netflix denied these claims and said the lawsuit was based on inaccurate and distorted information.
Encryption trust is now a legal battleground
The lawsuit matters because encrypted messaging apps depend heavily on user trust. Most users cannot personally verify how encryption works, so they rely on company promises, privacy labels, and public statements.
For Texas, the question is whether WhatsApp’s privacy marketing gives users a false sense of security. For Meta, this case is another big legal test about how its platforms describe data protection and private messages.
This dispute also shows that encryption is now more than just a technical feature. It has become a consumer protection and privacy issue, as well as a legal battleground between regulators and the world’s biggest tech companies.
