End-to-End
Encryption

Early Internet (Web 1.0)

Let's first have a quick look at internet history. At first, the internet was a friendly place and most communications happened in the clear.

But then hackers came, they were able to listen to our communication or even do powerful tricks such as man-in-the-middle attacks, allowing them to intercept, block and inject messages, impersonating Alice or Bob.

The internet was no longer a safe place.

But the internet is full of wizards! They soon had developed cryptographic protocols such as SSH or SSL allowing them to be much safer against such attackers.

Everything was fine.

Age of Platforms (Web 2.0)

But then, Muggles — people who did not know how the internet worked — came. Because they were not wizards, they were not able to host their own website (even more so email servers). Yet they needed to communicate. They had to use platforms. This is what we call the web 2.0.

Shortly after the rise of the web 2.0, most of our private communications happen on platforms like Gmail or WhatsApp, most of our thoughts are shared on Twitter or Reddit, and most of our value is exchanged on platforms such as Amazon or Uber.

Platforms are wonderful, they help people connect and let the economy grow. They even protect our communication. We hear Google's "Don't be evil" and there are "privacy laws" such as the GDPR. But we also entered the world of surveillance capitalism, and data brokers are selling our data.

End-to-End Encryption

Alice wants to talk to Bob using a platform. Instead of encrypting her message to the platform, she can encrypt her message to Bob. This is called end-to-end encryption, and it's the way to hide your messages in the age of the platforms.

The idea is simple: you encrypt your messages on your device and the messages are decrypted on your correspondent's device. This way, the platform only sees the encrypted message, revealing no information about the cleartext.

Everyting is fine — again.