End-to-end encryption

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End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a method of implementing a secure communication system where only communicating users can participate. No one else, including the system provider, telecom providers, Internet providers or malicious actors, can access the cryptographic keys needed to read or send messages.^[1]

End-to-end encryption prevents data from being read or secretly modified, except by the true sender and intended recipients. Frequently, the messages are relayed from the sender to the recipients by a service provider. However, messages are encrypted by the sender and no third party, including the service provider, has the means to decrypt them. The recipients retrieve the encrypted messages and decrypt them independently. Since third parties cannot decrypt the data being communicated or stored, services that provide end-to-end encryption are better at protecting user data when they are affected by data breaches.^[2] Such services are also unable to share user data with government authorities, domestic or international.^[3][4]

In 2022, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office, the government body responsible for enforcing online data standards, stated that opposition to E2EE was misinformed and the debate too unbalanced, with too little focus on benefits, since E2EE helped keep children safe online and law enforcement access to stored data on servers was "not the only way" to find abusers.^[5]