Your connection is encrypted. Who can still read the message?

TLS protects data exchanged between two network endpoints, commonly a browser or app and a server. The TLS 1.3 standard describes a protocol designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering and message forgery on that connection. After the server receives the data, the service may process or store it in a form it can read. The padlock in a browser confirms an authenticated encrypted connection to the site; it does not, by itself, mean only the sender and recipient can read everything submitted to that site.

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) aims to keep message contents readable only at the communicating users’ endpoints. In a messaging app, the sending client encrypts content and the receiving client decrypts it. A service can route the ciphertext without having the plaintext needed to read the message. Meta’s description of WhatsApp’s multi-device design explains that messages are separately encrypted for the sender’s and recipient’s devices, and that message history transferred to a newly linked device is encrypted between devices.

If a chat relies only on TLS, the service receives plaintext at TLS termination so it can process the message, for example to store or forward it. In an E2EE chat, transport encryption can still protect the connection, while a separate end-to-end protocol protects the message from the service itself. The two protections can coexist; they address different parts of the route.

E2EE does not make every part of an app invisible. The service may still handle account identifiers, delivery times, device lists or other metadata, depending on its design. A linked or compromised endpoint can also expose content after decryption. Backups, notifications, search, moderation and cloud integrations may have different protections. For a product claim, ask what exactly is encrypted end to end, which endpoints hold keys, and whether backup or multi-device flows follow the same model. The phrase describes a protection boundary, not a blanket guarantee about every feature or every piece of account data.