[tinus_hn]

Regardless of how their encryption is done, if you reregister your phone number you get an sms and you’re in and the complete message history is decrypted. So clearly they have all the keys, otherwise they couldn’t send it to you. Practically it’s not end to end encrypted.

Note that this is the same with many services that claim encryption, for instance Apple.

[giancarlostoro]

Does apple have the keys or does iMessage just resend as a regular text if you deregister? End to end means only the two parties involved have the keys period.

[tinus_hn]

For Apple this is with their iCloud backups, storage etc. If you lose the password and your devices it can still be reset.