Home goods company Kohler would like a bold look in your toilet to take some photos. Its OK, though, the company has promised that all the data it collects on your waste will be end-to-end encrypted. However, a deeper look into the companys claim by technologist Simon Fondrie-Teitler revealed that Kohler seems to have no idea what E2EE actually means. According to Fondrie-Teitlers write-up, which was first reported by TechCrunch, the company will have access to the photos the camera takes and may even use them to train AI.The whole fiasco gives an entirely too on-the-nose meaning to the Internet of Shit.Kohler launched its $600 camera to hang on your toilets earlier this year. Its called Dekoda, and along with the large price tag, the toilet cam also requires a monthly service fee that starts at $6.99. If you want to track the piss and shit of a family of 6, youll have to pay $12.99 a month.What do you get for putting a camera on your toilet? According to Kohlers pitch, health & wellness insights about your gut health and possible signs of blood in the bowl as Dekoda uses advanced sensors to passively analyze your waste in the background.If youre squeamish about sending pictures of the waste of your family to Kohler, the company promised that all of the data is end-to-end encrypted. The privacy page for the Kohler Health said user data is encrypted end to end, at rest and in transit and its mentioned several places in the marketing.Its not, though. Fondrie-Teitler told 404 Media he started looking into Dekoda after he noticed friends making fun of it in a Slack hes part of. I saw the end-to-end encryption claim on the homepage, which seemed at odds with what they said they were collecting in the privacy policy, he said. Pretty much every other company I've seen implement end-to-end encryption has published a whitepaper alongside it. Which makes sense, the details really matter so telling people what you've done is important to build trust. Plus it's generally a bunch of work so companies want to brag about it. I couldn't find any more details though.E2EE has a specific meaning. Its a type of messaging system that keeps the contents of a message private while in transit, meaning only the person sending and the person receiving a message can view it. Famously, E2EE means that the messaging company itself cannot decode or see the messages (Signal, for example, is E2EE). The point is to protect the privacy of individual users from a company prying into data if a third party, like the government, comes asking for it.Kohler, its clear, has access to a users data. This means its not E2EE. Fondrie-Teitler told 404 Media that he downloaded the Kohler health app and analyzed the network traffic it sent. I didn't see anything that would indicate an end-to-end encrypted connection being created, he said.Then he reached out to Kohler and had a conversation with its privacy team via email. The Kohler Health app itself does not share data between users. Data is only shared between the user and Kohler Health, a member of the privacy team at Kohler told Fondrie-Teitler in an email reviewed by 404 Media. User data is encrypted at rest, when its stored on the user's mobile phone, toilet attachment, and on our systems. Data in transit is also encrypted end-to-end, as it travels between the user's devices and our systems, where it is decrypted and processed to provide our service.If Kohler can view the users data, as it admits to doing in this email exchange with Fondrie-Teitler, then its notby definitionusing E2EE. Kohler did not immediately respond to 404 Medias request for comment.I'd like the term end-to-end encryption to not get watered down to just meaning uses https so I wanted to see if I could confirm what it was actually doing and let people know, Fondrie-Teitler told 404 Media. He pointed out that Zoom once made a similar claim and had to pay a fine to the FTC because of it.I think everyone has a right to privacy, and in order for that to be realized people need to have an understanding of what's happening with their data, Fondrie-Teitler said. It's already so hard for non-technical individuals (and even tech experts) to evaluate the privacy and security of the software and devices they're using. E2EE doesn't guarantee privacy or security, but it's a non-trivial positive signal and losing that will only make it harder for people to maintain control over their data.