Kalyan Gottipati

You are absolutely right that encryption of data in transit is not a silver bullet, particularly when local access by an attacker. However it remains a key element for reliable security defenses Here's are couple of use cases:

Even if read by a third-party, encrypted data is unintelligible to unauthorized parties. Mitigates the impact of a successful attack by making stolen data useless. Makes it harder for attackers to manipulate data in transit.. etc.

Thank you for your interest in this topic. I'll definitely write an article on the benefits of encrypting API payloads when handling PII.

This article provides a step-by-step guide on encrypting HTTPS request and response payloads to safeguard sensitive PII data from exposure through browser inspection