this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
1254 points (99.7% liked)

Technology

79473 readers
5894 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] YeahToast@aussie.zone 7 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Chief, if you needed to make an informed decision about every decision in life, there'd be no time for life. That's why other people specialize in jobs so that within reason, confidence can be placed to their decision. I'm not saying you blindly agree and follow everything, but people can't be responsible for every decision. For example, who made the seatbelt in your car? What research did you personally do to verify the safety of your seatbelt. What maintenance have you done to it to ensure that it works as intended? Pretty important life saving bit of equipment.

Edit: my presumption is that you(or the vast majority of the population) haven't done any research into your seatbelt because you trust in the car company and the safety rating requirements of your nation to ensure adequate protection.

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world -1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

You don’t need to worry about who made your seatbelt the same way you don’t need to worry about which specific programmers work for meta

You do need to worry about the repairability and safety rating of your car the same way you need to worry about the core descriptions of Meta’s products

Do you see?

[–] Kevnyon@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Repairability in what way? Outside of changing the tires, a modern car is so complex with all the electronic systems in it that you can't really repair it yourself and you can't even reset the error codes because you don't have that special tablet to even hook into it.

For safety ratings, do you even know what they test and how without looking it up? I'd venture a guess that no, but I've been surprised before.

People maybe buy a Toyota because they once read that they just work or people may buy a Mercedes one day because their Dad used to always drive one, but they probably didn't sift through the damn safety and repairability ratings for it, they probably just bought it after a test drive. Its the same thing with anything really, how many times have you ever seen anyone question an app or a device that they are using when it just works and they don't even have to think about it? Its either 0 or close to it.

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

You can simply go look up how repairable various makes and models are considered by reputable sources it’s very simple research that a mere google will tell anyone. You’re actually making it out to be much more complicated than it is. They tell you exactly what the safety ratings are for and how they’re tested you just have to spend more than 0 minutes reading the first few google results.

People can voice ask Google simple questions they’re just not wanting to care about any of this and then are shocked when anything happens.

You admit it yourself they’re just lazy consumers lol

[–] YeahToast@aussie.zone 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

So here you're referencing using Google that all privacy conscious consumers would be losing their mind at.. so I guess this proves my point that it shouldn't be solely up to the individual to protect themselves.

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 1 points 17 minutes ago

LOL you can use any search engine you want