‘Secret lovers are protected, rebels are not’: Sridhar Vembu points out Aratay’s advantage through quiet research at Apple

Sridhar Vembu, co-founder of Zoho Corp, laid out the company’s nuanced stance on privacy in a detailed post, drawing a sharp line between personal data protection, corporate confidentiality and government compliance while emphasizing that end-to-end encryption (E2EE) will “soon be available” for its messaging app, Arratai.

Addressing three different privacy scenarios — “secret lover,” “targeted advertising,” and “secret rebel” — Vembo said Zoho’s technology is designed to protect users’ private communications and enterprise data from internal misuse and external data mining systems.

“The secret lover case also applies to an organization’s trade secrets and confidential data, but the secret lover case is more attractive,” Fembo wrote. He stressed that Zoho’s technology stack is designed to ensure privacy in such cases, reaffirming the company’s longstanding refusal to extract user data for advertising purposes.

In what he called the second case, Fembo condemned ad-driven models that exploit user data for commercial gain. “By pledging that your data will not be used to try to sell you things, we protect you from that feeling of being alienated or violated,” he said, noting that the policy also protects companies’ trade secrets from leaking into ad tech pipelines.

Regarding the politically sensitive “secret rebel” scenario, Fembo issued a frank reality check. “Any company operating in a jurisdiction that promises to protect a secret rebel against its government is making a false promise,” he said, adding that “sovereign power always prevails over mere corporations.” He said Zoho must comply with the laws of every country in which it operates, just like Apple in China or Google in India.

Despite these legal limits, Vembo noted that “secret rebels can communicate as secret lovers do,” alluding to the technical safeguards Zoho provides without the promise of legal immunity.

In a follow-up to App