Notes on privacy and data collection of Matrix.org (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Notes on privacy and data collection of Matrix.org (2019)

#61

Post by foxfluff » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

ajvs wrote: post #25

These issues I'd consider pretty crucial to approaching Signal-like privacy and there's not been much progress on them unfortunately: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1769 https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/11655 https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/2320 https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/2772 https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/2458

I think this one is also pretty bad. And years later still not fixed. https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/2527

In short? When you look at a room, your client sends a (public) read receipt. So stalkers get near-realtime data on your activity and the simple act of viewing different rooms (and maybe even just focusing the window) to see what's up causes data to be sent to the server. Ugh.

Re: Notes on privacy and data collection of Matrix.org (2019)

#62

Post by uoaei » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

spurgu wrote: post #58

m-p-3 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Signal forces you to use your phone number as your identifier, which can be traced relatively easily to a person or at least a geographical position by the authorities. The content of the message might be encrypted, but metadata can provide valuable intelligence insights. At least Matrix can be used mostly anonymously through a user-generated identifier, without an email address or phone number, and can be used t…

> The content of the message might be encrypted, but metadata can provide valuable intelligence insights. What metadata? Signal doesn't store anything about you aside the date you joined and the time of your last ping.

Data is sent over a network, and has an origin and destination. Of course Signal wouldn't store things like that, but the network administrator wouldn't have much trouble collecting extra metadata such as that on top of what is stored.

Re: Notes on privacy and data collection of Matrix.org (2019)

#63

Post by bigyellow » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

spurgu wrote: post #58

m-p-3 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Signal forces you to use your phone number as your identifier, which can be traced relatively easily to a person or at least a geographical position by the authorities. The content of the message might be encrypted, but metadata can provide valuable intelligence insights. At least Matrix can be used mostly anonymously through a user-generated identifier, without an email address or phone number, and can be used t…

> The content of the message might be encrypted, but metadata can provide valuable intelligence insights. What metadata? Signal doesn't store anything about you aside the date you joined and the time of your last ping.

> Signal doesn't store anything about you aside the date you joined and the time of your last ping.

Last I checked, Signal uses AWS, Azure and GCP. All of those services are completely logged and although "Signal" may not be storing metadata, intelligence services on those networks definitely are.

Re: Notes on privacy and data collection of Matrix.org (2019)

#64

Post by SuchAnonMuchWow » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

snvzz wrote: post #50

aero-glide2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both have to be online to transmit messages. As there is no server.

With grease around that. Clients will buffer offline messages, and send them when the other end is online. More or less how skype used to work, before it got bought by Microsoft and centralized.

That doesn't work if you are never (or not often) online at the same time as the other.

I use signal to chat with my cousin who is in another continent, and he is online only when within reach of public wifi when he's outside, which is at night for me. My phone is always connected to 4G, so maybe what you propose could work in this specific case, but in other cases it could be an issue.

Re: Notes on privacy and data collection of Matrix.org (2019)

#65

Post by pkulak » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

It's all tradeoffs. You can't have perfect security, _and_ store historical messages on the server, for example. But I use Matrix because I don't want ephemeral messaging. Matrix found a way to get 99% of the security of Signal while giving me the features I need, and that's why I use it.

Plus, I self host, which, in my opinion, more than makes up for anything else. Hell, I'd take storing my own plain text over E2E on someone else's server even.

Re: Notes on privacy and data collection of Matrix.org (2019)

#66

Post by tptacek » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

fsflover wrote: post #26

ajvs wrote: post #25

These issues I'd consider pretty crucial to approaching Signal-like privacy and there's not been much progress on them unfortunately: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1769 https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/11655 https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/2320 https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/2772 https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/2458

Unfortunately Signal is a walled garden actively fighting against alternative clients and servers. This is enough for me to avoid it and recommend Matrix. If you feel that those issues are critical, please donate your money or time to solve them.

This isn't responsive to the previous comment. Either the messenger meets or exceeds the privacy and security of Signal or it doesn't. If it doesn't, that's material regardless of what you believe about the aesthetics of Signal or their communitarian spirit. Most people who use secure messengers are LARPing (often in a good-willed performative way, as a way of supporting the privacy of others who truly need it).

But some people aren't LARPing, truly need privacy, and compromising their safety to make a point about federation is immoral.

Re: Notes on privacy and data collection of Matrix.org (2019)

#67

Post by pkulak » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

ryukafalz wrote: post #38

southerntofu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So seems that they probably won't have issues with that it might harm Matrix, as they are a direct competitor. I was not aware of the Grid project, but they seem to make good points. Matrix is developed by a restricted group of people with a startup vibe and some cringy/questionable actions: - spitting on other protocols (or not even acknowledging their existence) without a technical reasoning (Matrix could have be…

> pushing for a broken state resolution algorithm (decentralized consensus) without a formal analysis, which means it's now reached its 5th or 6th version and Matrix clients are all incompatible with one another (because only Element implements them all) and once they have been upgraded rooms cannot be downgraded so in many places only Element can chat This is false. Clients don't do state res, servers do. Clients do…

Yeah, I didn't want to say anything because I'm no expert, but as far as I can tell, Matrix clients use a Rest API. It's not like they are resolving state deltas locally or something. It seems like the big complexity right now is the encryption, since that, by definition, has to happen on the client. There's a concerted effort, however, to make that as easy as possible with shared libraries and such.

Re: Notes on privacy and data collection of Matrix.org (2019)

#68

Post by fsflover » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #66

fsflover wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Signal is a walled garden actively fighting against alternative clients and servers. This is enough for me to avoid it and recommend Matrix. If you feel that those issues are critical, please donate your money or time to solve them.

This isn't responsive to the previous comment. Either the messenger meets or exceeds the privacy and security of Signal or it doesn't. If it doesn't, that's material regardless of what you believe about the aesthetics of Signal or their communitarian spirit. Most people who use secure messengers are LARPing (often in a good-willed performative way, as a way of supporting the privacy of others who truly need it). But…

Security is not everything there is to want from a messenger. Due to its centralized approach, Signal is having a problem with financing and I doubt it can be easily solved. It had a large downtime recently. Also, it becomes an easy target for all kinds of bad actors, since it's the single server. I trust it less for those reasons, even if it's "secure" by your standards. I just don't see it being secure long-term, not enough to suggest it to my friends or use myself.

People who truly need privacy in the short term, should consult a professional and not trust random comments from strangers.

Re: Notes on privacy and data collection of Matrix.org (2019)

#69

Post by rglullis » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

spurgu wrote: post #59

rglullis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it is going to sound like an ad-hominem, but once I realized that this is from the same person behind the "Grid protocol", I immediately closed the tab. This guy seems to be on a quixotic vendetta against msxid. It is the third or fourth persona (first it was from a personal account, then from his company, now he has even a non-profit advocating for privacy) that he created to re-hash the same old, outdated an…

I don't get this kind of thinking? How does the why of what he's saying influence the what ? Or even worse, disqualify it? If it's factually correct then the reason behind writing it seems quite irrelevant, to me at least. And you're mentioning it's outdated, which would be natural given that the last commit was over two years ago.

It was outdated two years ago already, people already back then assuming good intent and pointed out that the "issues" he complained about were being worked on, yet he adamantly continued to ignore it and claim that everyone using Matrix was being duped and that his implementation of the id server was the only way to go. That is why.

Re: Notes on privacy and data collection of Matrix.org (2019)

#70

Post by shapefrog » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

m-p-3 wrote: post #34

fsflover wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Signal is a walled garden actively fighting against alternative clients and servers. This is enough for me to avoid it and recommend Matrix. If you feel that those issues are critical, please donate your money or time to solve them.

And Signal forces you to use your phone number as your identifier, which can be traced relatively easily to a person or at least a geographical position by the authorities. The content of the message might be encrypted, but metadata can provide valuable intelligence insights. At least Matrix can be used mostly anonymously through a user-generated identifier, without an email address or phone number, and can be used t…

> And Signal forces you to use your phone number as your identifier

Signal forces you to use "a" phone number as your identifier. It does not have to be your primary phone number, or home phone number or office phone number. Just a phone number that you have control of.