Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced that Texas is suing Wi-Fi router maker TP-Link for misleading marketing about the security of its products and allowing Chinese hacking groups to access Americans’ devices. Paxton originally began looking at TP-Link in October 2025. Texas Governor Greg Abbott later banned state employees from using TP-Link products in January this year.
TP-Link is no longer owned by a Chinese company and its products are assembled in Vietnam, but Paxton’s lawsuit claims that because the company’s “ownership and supply-chain are tied to China” it is subject to the country’s data laws, which require companies to comply with requests from Chinese intelligence agencies. The lawsuit also says that firmware vulnerabilities in TP-Link’s hardware have already “exposed millions of consumers to serious cybersecurity risks.”
TP-Link provided the following statement to Engadget in response to the lawsuit:
The claims made by the Texas Attorney General’s Office are baseless and will be proven false. TP-Link Systems Inc. is an independent American company. Neither the Chinese government nor the CCP has any ownership or control over TP-Link, its products, or its user data. TP-Link’s founder and CEO, Jeffrey Chao, lives in Irvine, CA, and is not and has never been a member of the CCP. To ensure the highest level of security, our core operations and infrastructure are located entirely within the United States, and all US users’ networking data is stored securely on Amazon Web Services servers. We will continue to vigorously defend our reputation as a trusted provider of secure connectivity for American families.
TP-Link was reportedly being investigated at the federal level in 2024 after its equipment was linked to the massive “Salt Typhoon” hack, which accessed data from several US telecommunications companies. Despite all signs pointing to the federal government preparing to ban TP-Link in 2025, reuters The Trump administration halted plans to ban the company’s routers in early February ahead of a meeting between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping, the report said.
Update, February 17, 3:38 PM ET: Added statement from TP-Link.
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