Privacy & encryption glossary
Plain-language explanations of the terms behind Atomic Blend.
End-to-end encryption
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) means data is encrypted on your device and can only be decrypted by you — the service storing it never has access to the readable content.
Zero-knowledge
A zero-knowledge service is built so that it has no knowledge of your data — it cannot read your content because it never holds the keys to decrypt it.
AGE encryption
AGE is a modern, simple, and secure file-encryption format and tool designed as a safer, easier replacement for older tools like GPG.
Self-hosting
Self-hosting means running software on infrastructure you control, instead of relying on a provider’s servers — giving you full ownership of your data and uptime.
Metadata
Metadata is data about your data — who you contacted, when, from where, and how often — which can reveal almost as much as the content itself, even when the content is encrypted.
Open source
Open-source software publishes its source code so anyone can read, audit, modify, and run it. Atomic Blend is licensed under AGPLv3, a strong copyleft open-source license.
Data sovereignty
Data sovereignty is the principle that your data — and control over where it lives and who can access it — belongs to you, not to the company that happens to store it.