In cloud computing, the term zero-knowledge (or occasionally no-knowledge or zero access) refers to software services that store, transfer or manipulate data such that it is only accessible to its owner, not to the service provider. This is accomplished by encrypting the raw data at the client side or end-to-end (in case of one or more clients, respectively), without disclosing the password to the service provider. This means neither the service provider, nor any third party that might intercept the data, can ever decrypt and access the data on their own, allowing the client a higher degree of privacy than would otherwise be possible. In addition, zero-knowledge services usually aspire to hold as little metadata as possible, so as not to jeopardize clients' privacy by holding data beyond w