I haven’t hosted my own matrix server yet. is it safe to join an instance? I don’t really know how private that would be. the question is when I signup/login would I be giving out my IP? is the metadata private? sorry for asking this, I’m just a bit paranoid
Matrix has the problem that room state (containing a lot of Metadata) gets replicated and stored indefinitely on every homeserver any user connects with or connects to. This is a feature™ for enabling distributed chat rooms, but comes at a serious privacy cost.
As most of the matrix network centers around the UK based official servers, you can be pretty sure your metadata will end up on those servers one way or the other and the privacy protection in the UK is very weak. Furthermore, most Matrix homeservers by default use the centralized identity service also hosted in the UK on the official servers.
then my only choice is to just host my own servers. most of the time I talk to people 1-on-1 so it works for me.
So why not Jami? (https://jami.net/)
It’s P2P so no servers and it’s a GNU project.
I tried this a few times, but for me it never worked reliably. Are you using it as a day-to-day kind of thing? Family and friends?
yeah, I think It’s best on a zombie apocalypse, or a mass surveillance one. since messages can only be sent when both peers are online
I never tried it, but heard from well-known people that it has the highest opsec.
Only if you self-host and the other person is also using an account on your server (or another trusted server).
Edit: also note that Synapse has pretty hefty system requirements and the database quickly grows using many gigabytes of data.
I’ll have to make sure IRLs talk to me within or with their own servers. for online users I shouldn’t worry that much. is there a good matrix client for multiple accounts? I’m kind of leading a double life.
Mirage supports multiple accounts. It’s still in alpha but worth keeping an eye on. Most features work (including E2EE), but a couple are missing (emoji reactions aren’t shown/usable, and if someone edits a message it is instead shown as a new message).
Fractal currently does not support E2EE or multiple accounts, but E2EE is coming in their new branch (Fractal-next) and multiple accounts are on their to-do.
because element is the most complete with features. only needs to implement TOR and Multiple accounts. and then I’m sold. for privacy and simplicity, I’ll just use xmpp
This²
I am not aware of one. But why not XMPP? Is is easier to self-host, works nicely over Tor and most clients have multi-account support. It also produces much less metadata and usually does not store it longer than necessary.
you have a point there… maybe I should just use XMPP+Mumble server for voIP. I’ll avoid matrix as for now as long as it has many privacy holes. and I already know how to use XMPP over tor which is convenient.
how is XMPP’s end-to-end encryption though, I heard alot of varying opinions on that.
For me e2ee on XMPP with OMEMO works fine, never had problems with it. But I guess your best experience will be if both sides use the Conversations client on Android.
What would be a good way to host your own XMPP server for messaging and video? I tried setting up ejabbert but didn’t get it to work for video… setting up a synapse server on the other hand was easier.
Any other options? Or good ejabbert guides for that matter?
You set up both synapse and jitsi-meet? Because Matrix does not natively support video at all and simply uses the XMPP based Jitsi-meet for it. Also did you setup your own identity service for Synapse? Because without both, you didn’t really self-host matrix :p
In general though, getting video to work with STUN/TURN is a bit more involved. But this is a general issue and also happens if you self-host video support with Matrix.
But you might have better luck with https://snikket.org/ which tries to include everything and is based on Prosody.
How is XMPP compared with SIP+SIMPLE in that?
Could you explain a bit better what you mean? SIMPLE might be somewhat comparable purely as a protocol, but for all practical purposes is isn’t comparable to XMPP as there are no good clients and no federated network.
There is federated network and good client. Linphone is an example. Jitsi (not Jitsi Meet) is other.
You can send messages to any SIP account using SIMPLE.
Weeeelll, technically. But there is no where near the same ecosystem as for XMPP. Also I don’t think there is e2ee for SIMPLE.
XMPP does calls as well: https://blog.wirelessmoves.com/2020/05/xmpp-voice-and-video-calls-with-conversations-a-dream-come-true.html
You could also combine an XMPP server you manage with something like Asterisk to then allow your XMPP clients to do SIP calls through that, though that is a bit involved.
The XMPP calls are set in Jingle XEPs. AFAIK, there are big stability issues even with the XEPs for STUN/TURN discovery.
Your experience may vary, but on my personal XMPP server with it’s own STUN/TURN server using conversations.im - calls pretty much Just Work (edit: I’ve only tried a call with a siskin client outside of conversations and that worked too).
Take a look at this link: https://matrix.org/clients-matrix/
It has a comparison of clients features at the bottom. Some of them allow multiple accounts. Not all clients support E2EE tho.