In the world of secure communications, "End-to-End Encryption" (E2EE) is the gold standard. It’s the promise that your conversation is completely private, accessible only to you and the people you're talking to. No one in the middle—not your internet provider, not a malicious actor, and not even the service provider—can listen in.
But there’s a catch many video conferencing platforms don’t advertise: their E2EE often only applies to the audio and video streams.
What about the chat messages you send? The files you share? The ideas you draw on the whiteboard? In many cases, this "metadata" is not covered by E2EE, leaving a significant part of your confidential meeting exposed on the server.
At plugNmeet, we believe this is a broken promise. True privacy requires comprehensive security. This is how we built it.
Standard Encryption vs. True End-to-End Encryption
To understand the difference, let's use an analogy.
Standard Encryption (The Armored Truck)
Most secure services use transport-layer encryption (TLS/DTLS). Think of this as an armored truck. Your data (the package) is safe while it travels from you to the server (the warehouse). No one can intercept it on the road.
However, once the package arrives at the warehouse, the warehouse staff can open it to process it. The server can "see" your data. For many platforms, this is necessary to provide features like chat history or server-side recording. It's secure, but it’s not completely private from the service provider.
The Promise of E2EE (The Unbreakable Lockbox)
End-to-End Encryption is like putting your contents in an unbreakable lockbox before it even goes into the armored truck. Only you and your recipient have the keys.
The armored truck (the server) can transport the box, but it has absolutely no way to open it. The warehouse can store the box, but it cannot see what's inside. The server becomes a "zero-knowledge" provider, blindly passing encrypted data it cannot decipher.
The plugNmeet Difference: Encrypting Everything
Many platforms that offer E2EE only put the audio and video streams inside the lockbox. The chat messages, participant lists, and whiteboard drawings are sent as separate, less-secure packages that the server can read.
This is where plugNmeet’s architecture provides a fundamental advantage.
When you enable E2EE in a plugNmeet room, we don't just encrypt the audio and video. We encrypt all real-time communication data, including:
- 🎙️ Audio & 📹 Video Streams
- 💬 Live Chat Messages
- 🎨 Whiteboard & Annotation Data
- 📝 All peer notifications
How is this possible?
Instead of treating these as separate features processed by the server, our architecture handles them as a unified stream of real-time data. This entire stream is encrypted on the user's device using a shared secret key before being passed through our secure messaging system (NATS). The server’s job is simply to route this single, indecipherable package of data to the other participants, who are the only ones with the keys to unlock it.
The server sees gibberish. You get true privacy.
When Should You Use E2EE?
While all plugNmeet calls are secure by default, E2EE provides the highest level of confidentiality for sensitive conversations. It's the ideal choice for:
- Healthcare: Ensuring patient-doctor confidentiality in telehealth sessions.
- Legal: Protecting privileged attorney-client conversations.
- Finance: Discussing sensitive financial data or corporate strategy.
- Journalism: Protecting sources and sensitive information.
- Internal Security Audits: When absolute privacy is paramount.
The Honest Trade-Off
Because E2EE makes the server "blind" to the content of your meeting, certain server-side features are disabled when it's active. Most notably, you cannot use server-side recording because the server has no access to the audio or video streams to record them.
This isn't a bug; it's proof that the encryption is working as designed.
Conclusion: Security by Design, Not as an Afterthought
True security isn’t a feature you bolt on. It has to be woven into the very fabric of the architecture. By designing plugNmeet to handle all real-time data as a single, encryptable stream, we can offer a level of comprehensive End-to-End Encryption that many other platforms cannot.
When you need the highest level of privacy, don't settle for partial protection. Choose a platform that was designed to keep your entire conversation secure.
Ready to experience true private communication?