I use the hardware button to mute. My headphone has a mute button right on the cord. It's fast and easy and always within reach. If that's not available, I use the operating system to mute. My Linux systems have a mic icon on the top bar. I believe it's easy to do in Windows also. I don't know about mac.
You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
201–210 of 353 posts
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is, just most people don’t care. And you can’t buy a little shutter for your laptop mic like you can for the camera.
You can easily buy a microphone with a physical mute switch though.
Yes, more addons for the employer-supplied Mac. I miss my Thinkpads
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not sure why they don't say which one Yeah, that's very annoying. Zoom, for example, will tell you, when you are muted and you begin to speak. It's a very nice thing. I have a microphone (that wasn't expensive) that has a hardware mute. I use it when I really want to make sure I'm not heard, even for "speaking" detection.
> Zoom, for example, will tell you, when you are muted and you begin to speak MS Teams has that feature too. TBH I'm not surprised: when you mute the mic in an app, you're still letting the app in control. If you really want to be safe, you need to mute at OS level or in hardware. That's why cameras have a hardware cover in modern laptops.
Precisely, this is why I think the earlier comment's suggestion:
> How about we not make the default that companies can do whatever they want and users have to take steps like a hardware-muted mic (which isn't always an option) to ensure a basic expectation of privacy?
Sounds nice on the surface, but is ultimately silly. Sure, it'd be nice if everyone did the right thing, but you can never guarantee that, and hence if you really care you need to perform the mute at a lower level than what the app has access to.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Element/Matrix also support e2ee. Jitsi has supposed e2ee videoconferencing (on Chrome - they used some chrome-specific API for processing) for (I believe) at least a year or two.
The API is called Insertable Streams. It's not actually supposed to be Chrome-specific, others are just lagging in implementing it. Element has native E2EE for 1-to-1 calls, but uses Jitsi for group calls. Native E2EE group calls actually also exist, called Element Call ( https://element.io/blog/introducing-native-matrix-voip-with-... ) but they're yet to be integrated into Element and specced into Matrix, I believe.
Jitsi's own solution I assume (also on Jitsi Meet), and not the usual XMPP/Jabber that (non-Meet) Jitsi uses ?
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
"They found that all of the apps they tested occasionally gather raw audio data while mute is activated, with one popular app gathering information and delivering data to its server at the same rate regardless of whether the microphone is muted or not." The way I read that is, only one of the apps actually sends audio data to the server when the mic is muted. I'm not sure why they don't say which one, and I'm not sur…
There's a weird culture around reporting problems without reporting names. You see it a lot here on HN and occasionally in media. I'll never understand. Why bother talking about corporate misbehavior (or etc) and not back it up with the basic, minimal data you could provide?
> You see it a lot here on HN and occasionally in media
It makes some sense here on HN where people often post under their real names and want to think carefully before badmouthing a former employer, or otherwise picking a fight.
I agree that journalists have little excuse.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how is it Zoom has any business at all? Zoom was the first videoconferencing software I experienced where the first 15 minutes of the meeting was not spent with "can you see me," "can you hear me," some people falling back to dialing in to a speakerphone, and one or more out-of-band calls to various participants to troubleshoot problems. Zoom was click a link. And it worked. Nobody cared much about anything else be…
Perhaps I am misremembering but I remember using Skype 9-10 years ago without any issues. Zoom does not seem to be that much of an improvement in terms of ease of use
But is Skype that way now? Zoom was in good position when the pandemic made everyone pick a video conferencing app. Some of the competition (Webex comes to mind) got slapped so hard they basically copied the Zoom interface in order to stay somewhat competitive.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#207Quit hoping that software providers change in this regard and demand hardware with physical microphone kill switches. The Framework laptop provides an example of a high quality, repairable laptop with physical kill switches for the mic and camera. I love the UX of "Oops, it looks like you are talking but you are muted" and I also value privacy. The physical kill switch provides a true "mute button" when it's needed.
I love my framework... But be careful If taking out the battery. The battery connector socket on the mother board is extremely fragile. I learned that when I bent the pins in the socket when reattaching the battery...
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#208This reads like the app is open and active and muted within the app? So the answer is to close the app if you want privacy? Seems kind of obvious to me.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#209I’m less concerned about privacy and more concerned about a bug in their code causing my microphone to say mute but not mute
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
"They found that all of the apps they tested occasionally gather raw audio data while mute is activated, with one popular app gathering information and delivering data to its server at the same rate regardless of whether the microphone is muted or not." The way I read that is, only one of the apps actually sends audio data to the server when the mic is muted. I'm not sure why they don't say which one, and I'm not sur…
> I'm not sure why they don't say which one Yeah, that's very annoying. Zoom, for example, will tell you, when you are muted and you begin to speak. It's a very nice thing. I have a microphone (that wasn't expensive) that has a hardware mute. I use it when I really want to make sure I'm not heard, even for "speaking" detection.
MacBook pros already have a mute-speaker button.
It would be so nice to have a mute-mic button which lights up when muted.