In the last few years phones and apps have been touting themselves as better than other phones/services because their messaging has end-to-end encryption, or some other variant of secure messaging. Why do we care?
Edit: Thanks for the answers, everyone!
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Who can read your encrypted message?
If a provider says they encrypt your data, you generally assume that “encrypted” means that nobody can read it except the recipient.
But that’s NOT what encryption means, encryption usually means that _someone_ can’t read your data, but without more details, you don’t really have any assurances at all. And providers gleefully abuse the term to give you false expectations about their services, lying by omission to hide their bad practices.
The idea that nobody can read the message except for the recipient is called end-to-end encryption. It’s still encryption, but with the extra caveat saying exactly who can read it.
As consumers get wise to provider shenanigans, this term is getting more visible and popular.
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