Is Zoom private? When Zoom calls are end-to-end encrypted

You have probably said something on a Zoom call you would not want read back to you. A diagnosis. A salary. A lawyer's advice. Whether that call was private depends on a setting most people have never looked at, and a small icon most people have never clicked.

Short answer: a standard Zoom call is encrypted, but not end-to-end encrypted, so it is not private from Zoom. By default Zoom uses "Enhanced" encryption with keys its servers manage. True end-to-end encryption, where only participants hold the keys, is an option the host must turn on, and it disables recording, transcription, and AI features.

Is Zoom end-to-end encrypted?

Not by default. Standard meetings use AES-256 GCM encryption with keys generated by Zoom's servers. That protects your call from someone snooping on the network. It does not keep Zoom out, because the company that holds the key can decrypt the stream to record it, transcribe it, and run AI features on it.

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a different design. The keys live only on the participants' devices, and Zoom's servers pass along data they cannot read. Zoom added an E2EE option for free and paid accounts in October 2020, and in May 2024 moved it to post-quantum end-to-end encryption, which applies automatically when everyone is on app version 6.0.10 or later. That upgrade is real and worth credit. It only protects meetings where E2EE is switched on.

Check which encryption your call is using

You can answer the question for your own meeting in about ten seconds. In the corner of the Zoom meeting window there is a small shield icon. Click it, and Zoom shows the meeting information, including the encryption type. Per Zoom's support article:

Shield you see	What it means	Can Zoom's servers decrypt the call?
Green shield with a check mark	"Enhanced" encryption, the default	Yes
Green shield with a padlock	End-to-end encryption	No
Orange shield with an exclamation mark	Some participants or connections are not fully encrypted	Treat as not private

When E2EE is on, the host can also read out a security code shown in that panel. If everyone's code matches, nobody is sitting in the middle of the call.

What you give up when you turn on E2EE

This is the real reason E2EE is off by default. Every convenience feature Zoom sells needs Zoom's servers to see the content, and E2EE forbids exactly that. Zoom's own list of features that stop working:

Feature	Default "Enhanced" meeting	End-to-end encrypted meeting
Cloud recording	Yes	No
Live transcription	Yes	No
Zoom AI features, including AI Companion summaries	Yes	No
Live streaming	Yes	No
Polls and surveys	Yes	No
Meeting chat before and after the meeting	Yes	No
Zoom Apps, Notes, and Whiteboard	Yes	No

Read the table the other way and it answers a question people now ask a lot: is Zoom's AI Companion private? If a meeting has an AI summary, Zoom's systems processed the conversation. That is only possible because the meeting was not end-to-end encrypted.

Can the host or your employer see your Zoom chats?

The host cannot see private messages between two other participants during a meeting. That part of the folk wisdom is true. But three things can still put your "private" chat on a record:

Anyone in the conversation can save it. A participant who saves the meeting chat saves every message they could see, including your direct messages to them.
Recordings and saved transcripts travel. Whoever holds the file can share it.
Work accounts can archive everything. Zoom's archiving documentation says an organization can capture in-meeting chat with a "tag to differentiate public vs. direct chat," plus "edited messages, and deleted messages," alongside audio, video, transcripts, and AI conversation data. The same page notes that "end-to-end encrypted meetings are not supported" for archiving.

So on a company Zoom account, assume your direct messages in a meeting can end up in a compliance archive, deleted ones included. The same logic applies to your company's chat tool, which we unpack in whether your boss can read your Slack messages.

Does Zoom use your calls to train AI?

Zoom's current terms of service say "Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments or other communications-like Customer Content ... to train Zoom or third-party artificial intelligence models."

That wording exists because of a fight. In March 2023 Zoom added a clause, Section 10.4 at the time, giving itself a "perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free" license to customer content for uses that included "machine learning" and "artificial intelligence." It went unnoticed until August 2023, and after days of backlash Zoom rewrote it, as Variety reported. The outcome was good. The lesson is that on a call Zoom can decrypt, the only thing between your words and a future product is a policy that has already changed once.

Why "encrypted" on Zoom needed an FTC settlement

Zoom's marketing and its engineering did not always say the same thing. In March 2020, The Intercept reported that Zoom advertised "end-to-end encryption" while "the Zoom service itself can access the unencrypted video and audio content of Zoom meetings." A Zoom spokesperson told the outlet that "currently, it is not possible to enable E2E encryption for Zoom video meetings," and that "end to end" meant "from Zoom end point to Zoom end point." Cryptographer Matthew Green's verdict: "I think they're doing this in a slightly dishonest way."

In November 2020 the Federal Trade Commission settled with Zoom. The FTC said Zoom had claimed since at least 2016 to offer "end-to-end, 256-bit encryption" while holding the keys itself, and that some cloud recordings sat unencrypted on Zoom's servers for up to 60 days despite claims they were encrypted immediately. The complaint also covered ZoomOpener, a hidden web server Zoom installed on Macs in 2018 to skip a browser safeguard, which Apple removed with an automatic update in July 2019. Zoom agreed to a security program and outside assessments. There was no fine.

That history is why the shield check above matters. The word "encrypted" on a product page tells you less than the icon in your meeting window.

How to make a sensitive Zoom call private

Turn on E2EE for the meetings that need it. The host enables end-to-end encryption in the Zoom web portal settings, and participants join as normal. On a free account, the host first verifies a phone number with an SMS code.
Click the shield once the call starts. Look for the padlock, not the check mark, and compare the security code if the stakes are high.
Skip cloud recording and AI summaries for that call. They cannot run under E2EE anyway, and a recording is a copy someone else can share. If you must record, record locally.
Lock the room. A passcode or waiting room keeps out uninvited guests. Encryption protects the stream, not the guest list.
Keep private chat out of work meetings. On a company account, treat meeting chat like email to your employer.

The rest of the conversation

A call rarely ends when the window closes. The notes, the documents, and the follow-up email carry the same sensitive details, and they usually land in tools where the provider holds the keys. That is the gap Secria is closing as a safer workspace: encryption you control as the default, not a toggle. It starts with Secria Mail, where stored mail is sealed with keys we never hold and every plan uses post-quantum encryption, so the recap you send after a confidential call is not sitting readable on someone else's server.

FAQ

Can Zoom see my meetings? On a default meeting, Zoom's servers hold the encryption keys and can decrypt the content, which is how cloud recording, transcription, and AI summaries work. On an end-to-end encrypted meeting they cannot. Click the shield in the meeting window to see which one you are in.

Is Zoom end-to-end encrypted by default? No. The default is "Enhanced" encryption with keys managed by Zoom. End-to-end encryption is an option the host has to enable, available on free and paid accounts.

Can the host see my private messages on Zoom? Not private messages between you and another participant, according to Zoom. But the person you messaged can save the chat, and organizations that use Zoom's archiving can capture direct and deleted in-meeting messages on meetings that are not end-to-end encrypted.

Is Zoom safe for therapy or telehealth? It depends on how the provider set it up. Ask whether the session uses end-to-end encryption and whether anything is recorded or summarized by AI. Those features need Zoom to process the audio, so a session with them on is not end-to-end encrypted.

Is Zoom's AI Companion private? Zoom says it does not use your meeting content to train AI models. But AI Companion only works on meetings Zoom can decrypt, so using it means Zoom's systems processed your conversation.