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Note that in the field of cryptography, the term zero knowledge refers to zero knowledge proofs, which predate that company by over 13 years.
by Ar-Curunir 10y ago
Note that in the field of cryptography, the term zero knowledge refers to zero knowledge proofs, which predate that company by over 13 years.
- infodroid 10y agoI don't dispute that fact. But there is precedent for the use of the term in privacy-respecting services, so we shouldn't be surprised when we encounter it. After ZKS shut down, the term continued to be used by hosting and communications services to explain their value proposition in a simple way. Having said that, I agree with the point that nowadays this usage may be unhelpful in promoting privacy-respecting services because zero-knowledge proofs have come a long way and there are now services like Zerocash that actually make use of them. So using the term to promote a different privacy-respecting feature may be confusing or misleading.
- SilasX 10y agoI wish they would pick a clearer term that's not already in use, like (as I think they mean in this case) "provider-obscured". Heck, even "homomorphic" would be better, as that signifies "does stuff you want with your data, without knowing the content of said data".
- dogma1138 10y agoThen that is a pretty poor precedent, however I've not seen people (who actually understand cryptography or security) reference "zero knowledge" as the fact that the provider can't access your data.