Keybase, owned by online meeting and teleconferencing behemoth Zoom, is a secure messaging and file sharing service that describes itself as providing “end-to-end encryption for things that matter.”
End-to-end encryption is pretty much what it says: encryption that starts on your computer, typically inside an individual app such as when browser submits a login form, and only gets stripped off at the far end when the data arrives at its final destination, such as when a website receives the login form with your username and password in it.
End-to-end encryption over the internet doesn’t just mean that your data is encrypted while it’s in transit from node to node along its network journey – it’s supposed to be a stronger guarantee than that.
It not only means that your data isn’t decrypted while it’s at any “rest stops” along the way, such as when an email message is held at your ISP for delivery later on, but also means that your data cannot be decrypted along the way, no matter whether you trust the person operating that “rest stop” or not.
