Zoom and Encryption

As most of us move quickly to continue our lives online, many of us use services like Zoom to do so. Now you've likely seen an article recently about the company and platform "Zoom" offering end-to-end encryption on the free version of its platform. This is great news!!! It's a bummer that it took them this long to offer it in the first place but still, this is a win for privacy and internet security.

Essentially what this means is that before they offered this service, the free and basic accounts weren't being encrypted from end to end. If you are unfamiliar with the term, encryption is the primary way that technology protects your data from being stolen while being sent over the internet. There are many different types of encryption with a ton of different uses, but I want to talk about this one for a moment.

Zoom and other platforms use the term end-to-end encryption. What the heck does that even mean and what's different about it over other types of encryption? To understand that we must talk about encryption for a moment. I KNOW, I KNOW. I am already losing you so let me ease your mind a bit. Go get some tea, light some incense. I'll be gentle and make it fun, I promise.

Here we go!

Let's say you are a pirate. Sails, ship, peg leg, parrot, the works. You have a treasure map and want to send it to your pirate friend because you are one of those nice pirates who like to share. You need to get it to them, but you also don't want any other sea dog to get their grimy hands on it. Perfectly reasonable. So, what do you do? You decide to send it with one of your trusted crew to hand deliver it to your friend. How much do you really trust this crew of yours though? What if they steal it for themselves?! What if they get captured?! There are so many things to worry about. It turns out you are also one of those super smart thinking pirates, so you come up with a plan. You happen to have an old lock that your friend left on your ship. They still have the key for it, so you know they'll be able to unlock it. You take that map and lock it in a chest with your friends lock and send it on its way. This way, the only person that can unlock it is them! Arr. But what if they want to send it back to you? Well it's a good thing you thought about that and sent them a lock too. Only you have the key for this lock so when your friend sends it back, only you will have the ability to unlock it. Good job pirate! You just used encryption!!

This is similar to what Zoom is offering to its free users. Instead of treasure map it is your face and voice (which is a treasure in its own way)! There is obviously a lot more to it, but hopefully this helps shed some light on what it means. With end-to-end encryption only the people on each end of the call and no one else, not even Zoom, will have the ability to see the beautiful treasure map that is your face.

You can find the official statement from Zoom by clicking here.

So, carry on with your Zoom happy hours, or treasure hunts on the high seas. After all, you’ve got the key!