Internxt is not fully end-to-end encrypted – filenames and folders are visible
I recently looked into how the Internxt rclone backend actually handles encryption, and I found an important distinction that isn't obvious from Internxt's E2E/zero-knowledge claims.
File contents are encrypted client-side, but filenames and folder names are not encrypted by the native Internxt rclone backend. They are sent to the Internxt servers in plaintext as part of the API requests.
This means Internxt can potentially see things like:
- filenames
- folder names
- directory structure
- file sizes
- timestamps and other metadata
For example, if you upload:
Private/
├── Tax/
│ └── 2025_Tax_Return.pdf
└── Medical/
└── Medical_Report.pdf
Internxt can still see the names and structure, even though it cannot decrypt the actual file contents.
So in my view, saying simply "Internxt is end-to-end encrypted" is misleading if this is meant to imply that all information about your files is E2E encrypted.
The more accurate statement would be:
>Internxt encrypts your file contents end-to-end, but filenames, folder names and certain metadata are not end-to-end encrypted.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone has looked into the Internxt API/client implementation in more detail and can confirm exactly which metadata is stored and whether any of it is additionally encrypted server-side.