Three senior Republican lawmakers sent a letter to Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, on Wednesday demanding responses to whistle-blower allegations about security and privacy flaws on the messaging app WhatsApp.
In their letter, Senators Charles Grassley of Iowa, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee asked Mr. Zuckerberg to address whether Meta had violated a settlement with federal regulators by allowing major security vulnerabilities in the company’s messaging app without informing shareholders and the public of the risks.
The letter comes days after the former head of security for WhatsApp sued Meta, which owns the messaging app, claiming it had allowed thousands of employees to have access to the sensitive data of its three billion users.
“I’ve always fought for whistle-blowers in both the public and private sectors,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement. “The American public deserves to know what Meta has done to keep their personal data safe and secure, and I look forward to getting answers.”
Meta has pushed back on the whistle-blower’s allegations.
“These are a mixture of outdated, distorted and demonstrably false claims,” Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, said in a statement. “WhatsApp has internal systems that protect the limited information available from users and we constantly enhance them.”
Meta, which also owns Facebook and Instagram, has faced several new whistle-blower allegations this week. On Tuesday, the Senate judiciary subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law held a hearing in which former Meta researchers testified that the company actively suppressed findings about children as young as age 10 being harassed and groomed on the company’s virtual reality platform.
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The post Senators Demand Answers From Mark Zuckerberg on WhatsApp Security appeared first on New York Times.
