| And while your comments are valid, a large part of your comments are actual FUD, because every other chat application out there behaves the same (and for a large portion of the user base, matrix probably is just yet another chat app...)?!? Especially your ongoing notion of metadata as private information which should be hidden is funny: how do you intend to do that? Short of wrapping your application into Tor (which seriously impacts performance letting your average family member happily pass it), I can't think of any method not including any BS-Bingo (how about a blockchain...). I agree that the vector.im-identity service seems really unnecessary and it reminds of Mozillas approach to sync (yeaah, the ones with your cited manifesto cough); still, I was well aware that this means regularly contacting this server and probably also checking my contacts DB against it (as well as having metadata on my browser, like every other website + it's 23 ad-networks, uuh)? Also for anyone interested in actually hosting a server it's really spelled out plainly, that this is a measure for convenience and you can still host your own server – btw: did you ever try to integrate federation into syndent (you might show the world your archived Issue/PR...). The part about the integration server is indeed worrying (but not you, putting at the end?!?) because without it, I don't really see the value proposition of matrix compared to plain old XMPP (and I wonder how you intend to monetize on kamax...). And I wasn't really aware of it... The other parts - I didn't give an eMail, wasn't a problem for me and I'm seriously not imaging any way to resolve this w/o aforementioned BS-bingo or yet another personal information (private/public key, which is beyond scope for most people + creates its own set of problems (people with unencrypted keys on their machines...) - so the only way for matrix to read messages is by adding a bot? can the scalar.vector.im server initiate that too? otherwise your claim that vector.im can read all your messages is just BS - you never mention that encryption by default would be cool. How will kamax.io handle this? |
We did the next best thing after improving sydent: we wrote our own implementation of an Identity server: mxisd. We linked it several times in the doc. You should give it a look. That's one example of how you can be better at privacy.
If the content of the document does not surprise you, and you were fully aware of all that was going on, it is also a win! Sadly, this is not our experience with the many users we came in contact with. They did not know, but wanted to know in details.
We do not mention End-to-End encryption would be cool indeed because it would not change what is happening here. In Matrix, the encryption would only cover the content of the event, but not its metadata (sender, source, timestamp, etc.). The document is clear that the vast majority of the leaks are around metadata (who sent what, who did what, when, from where) and not data itself (the message itself).
This document only scratches the surface of privacy in Matrix, by being specific to Matrix.org and its choice of recommended software. It gets worse as we start investigating the protocol itself. It is your choice to see this as FUD. It does not make it less true, and while you might not care, some do. We published the document for those who care and do not have the means, time or capacity to do such a research themselves.