Depends on the services you’re opting into. If you use integration services (sticker packs and such) hosted by the Matrix.org servers then the client will send some data to HQ. Same risk also exists with widgets such as traditional (video) calling which used Jitsi hosted elsewhere. There’s also the optional service that’ll link your phone and email to a Matrix account. All of that can be turned off, but most of it is enabled by default.
Oh, and if you join any rooms on matrix.org or chat with any :matrix.org users, then that’ll make your server share data, of course.
What do you mean by “traditional video calling”? Are video calls not encrypted? Is traditional meaning out of the box video calling? What is the alternative?
Modern Matrix has been moving towards a new video calling platform, but traditionally calls were done by just showing you a web page running Jitsi (by default https://app.element.io/jitsi.html?confId=something). I believe Jitsi gained the ability to encrypt calls, but you’d still be sending metadata (user agent, IP address, etc.) from your Element client to their servers.
You can prevent this by running your own Jitsi server and configuring your Matrix server/clients to prefer that. matrix-docker-ansible-deploy does this for you, for instance, if you just set jitsi_enabled:true in the config file.
Depends on the services you’re opting into. If you use integration services (sticker packs and such) hosted by the Matrix.org servers then the client will send some data to HQ. Same risk also exists with widgets such as traditional (video) calling which used Jitsi hosted elsewhere. There’s also the optional service that’ll link your phone and email to a Matrix account. All of that can be turned off, but most of it is enabled by default.
Oh, and if you join any rooms on matrix.org or chat with any :matrix.org users, then that’ll make your server share data, of course.
What do you mean by “traditional video calling”? Are video calls not encrypted? Is traditional meaning out of the box video calling? What is the alternative?
Modern Matrix has been moving towards a new video calling platform, but traditionally calls were done by just showing you a web page running Jitsi (by default https://app.element.io/jitsi.html?confId=something). I believe Jitsi gained the ability to encrypt calls, but you’d still be sending metadata (user agent, IP address, etc.) from your Element client to their servers.
You can prevent this by running your own Jitsi server and configuring your Matrix server/clients to prefer that. matrix-docker-ansible-deploy does this for you, for instance, if you just set
jitsi_enabled: truein the config file.Since it’s not federated, joining or chatting with other servers won’t apply.