Who exactly can see a private message on Lemmy? Anyone who runs a server? Or only the sending/receiving server?
And what all is your experience with Matrix? I don’t have an account, and imagine I would need one if someone wants to message me there.
Direct messages on Lemmy (and most Fediverse platforms) are not end-to-end encrypted, which means that it’s stored in plain.
For example, your instance admin could theoretically see your private messages. I don’t think they check it tho, but if that’s a concern for you, then you should not share any sensitive details in your DMs. Also, don’t worry: random people cannot see it
Matrix is way better for that: it’s a decentralized communication platform, end-to-end encrypted, so only you and your recipient can read the messages.
I think it’s kinda the “Fediverse of messaging”
I ise matrix. It’s pretty alright. Better than IRC
I use both matrix and irc. different platforms for different stuff
A DM is only visible to the sending and receiving server. It is like an email. The server admin on both sides can read them in the database. They are encrypted during the transport with tls (https). The database is usually not encrypted at rest.
You can PGP encrypt them. That should make them secure.
I use Matrix for a lot of my chatting to friends. It works fine. Bit janky, but I don’t mind.
The disclaimer you’re seeing just means that DMs are not e2ee, so the server admins of the sending/receiving servers can read the message. You could use DMs to exchange details for chatting on an e2ee platform if this is a concern.
I have a Matrix acc and joined several rooms of FOSS, but sadly it looks like most of them are still less active than their Telegram/Discord counterpart.
I mean, that might be ok. Busy discords are horrible places to be.
I believe the intention of DMs is that they are supposed to be accessible only to the sending/receiving server admins and sending/receiving users – but given the many ways that distributed systems which are not built specifically for secure comms can go wrong, you should simply assume anything you transmit through Lemmy is or will eventually be public, period.
If you are concerned that some information you transmit through Lemmy may be exposed the correct security stance is simply: DO NOT SEND IT.
That’s a bummer, man, because what you’d want to do is send the user a DM with a more secure service, but then you’d be exposing your user account and linking it your lemmy id.
If you’re paranoid, you can use PGP and send encrypted messages through Lemmy. But obviously that’s overkill.
My approach: assume that DMs are probably going to stay private, but acknowledge that there’s always a chance they leak out one way or another. If you want to send a link to a more secure service, perhaps that service allows you to generate a temporary link that you can deactivate after the recipient has used it. That would still be untraceable, as long as the eavesdropper isn’t opening that link immediately after you sent it.
Throwaway account on a no email signup instance?
I use matrix. The soulslike comm has a server on it.
Your DMs are not private on most Fediverse platforms. The ActivityPub protocol doesn’t provide encryption or filtering on non-local content, and treats DMs very much like it treats comments or posts.
For instance, I equipped a Wordpress install with the ActivityPub plugin and connected it to a small Mastodon instance. I found that it could read every non-local DM coming from that instance.
Essentially, if you’re DMing within an instance, it might be somewhat secure, depending on how the instance is setup. If you’re DMing between instances, there is no security - assume anyone who can read the ActivityPub feed can read your messages.
I use Matrix, switched my personal chats over there once Discord got too sketch
If Matrix were easier to use, I would convert my family to it, but frankly it’s simply not there. So we’re sticking to Signal for now.
At this point matrix no longer makes any fucking sense. Signal and self hosted fluxer both handle the two levels of social/chat apps better then matrix ever could.
Matrix just suffers massively from the classic open source problem of “what the actual fuck am I”.
signal is easier than matrix to get an account and chat, but matrix has better features for gaming, and also doesn’t require a phone number on a smartphone, which not all my friends have. i use signal for work, matrix for personal chats.
According to what’s said on Fedecan:
If a user from instance A sends a private message to a user from instance B, only the admins of instances A and B will be able to see the message. This is required to deal with spam and abuse.
That would make it a pretty useless feature then. https://xkcd.com/1033/
Matrix is fantastic but choose a client and server carefully.
The sending and receiving servers both have the message in plain text, so you can view them directly in the db.
Who has access to the db?
The instance owners, probably any admins, anyone else who has been granted access to the server, anyone who has acquired access through other means.
I don’t think private messages on Lemmy are E2E encrypted. I use matrix and I like it, but I don’t have people to talk to so I made some bots.
I dont know how tech saavy you are so apologies if this is an oversimplification but:
Matrix is a protocol. Think of it like a language. There are different matrix backends (synapse, continuwuity, etc) that run the server, which speaks the matrix protocol. Anyone can make a server and host it. They can open it up to federate, which lets other matrix servers talk to that server.
To join matrix you pick a server (matrix.org has one but there are many more. Some fediverse servers like bark.lgbt and blajah.zone have their own matrix servers under the same name). You sign up for that server same way you did for lemmy.
Then you pick a client. Element, cinny, sable, fluffychat are a few. These all “speak” the matrix protocol, the way something like the voyager app speaks activitypub, the protocol for lemmy. They all have slightly different features so use the one that has the features you like.
I love matrix. I self host my own but started on matrix.org. ive migrated my D&D group and friend group from discord to matrix.
if the server you join supports it, you can also bridge discord, telegram, and other chats to matrix. I still talk to some people on fisvord through a bridge.
I feel like its always been the case that messages in a forum are usually little things reltated to forum stuff that otherwise don’t make sense or can’t be done in a post. Not as a main source of messaging.
