If you want privacy-friendly, you really do want something that's open source. Jitsi is probably your best bet.
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
72 points (100.0% liked)
Privacy Guides
697 readers
1 users here now
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
You beat me to it for recommending Jitsi.
I really like Jitsi Meet and use it for any video conference calls. And Signal for one on one calls with friends and family.
For what it is worth, the FSF uses Jitsi Meet too and put up their own instance.
That's great!
@privacyfalcon9899 I've been using https://meet.coop/ for nearly 2 years, find it better than Zoom. Runs on BigBlueButton.
Thanks. This is the first time I saw this. Will check it out.
It seems that the user deleted his tweet. https://mashable.com/article/zoom-use-calls-train-ai-artificial-intelligence
If you're good with mega corps like Zoom, then I'd say Google Meet has been perfectly fine for us as a company. There's also Microsoft Teams.
If you're looking for something to use on a personal level and not corporate, then you've got pick of the litter.
Have to say with our home wifi (which is very good) Zoom is the only programme which consistently has problems with connections dropping out both on my devices and my wife's. Turning VPN and other things off can help, but even then not always. And why should I have to do that exactly anyway, hm? Stopped using it unless I have to because someone else is using it.
My work uses Teams - it does the job, and is reliable. It also has chat functions and other various things aside from the video calling which clutter it up though.I personally prefer Google Meet - cleaner interface, no clutter and has an adequate subtitle function which is in advertently hilarious at times but pretty useful as well.
Both have the advantage of being matched up with their equivalent email systems etc, so if a business uses MS Office it does kind of make sense to use Office and same for Gmail.
I'm talking from workplace experience where places have tried using all of these or interact with other companies using them. Since lockdowns ended I don't really do video calls in private.
Going for a more obscure open source option might have the same issue with other obscure options, persuading the other parties in the call to install and use something they've never heard of. That's not knocking those options though, I've never used them and can't comment on them.
Also for the commercial guys, GoTo Meetings and Cisco Webex are pretty well known.
Skype can also do some conferencing too.
For the FOSS stuff Nextcloud talk, OpenMeetings, and Briefing seem to be the other ones people have not mentioned. Not used any of them. Nextcloud seems interesting if you already use Nextcloud for other things.
Frankly I would personally look at Jitsi Meet, or Wire. I have used Jitsi Meet a year or two ago. I did not find it as stable as Zoom on my setup. I liked it in every other way. Also it uses WebRTC in the browser which means that the browser needs to be configured to use WebRTC and some browsers have typically worked better then others. I do not think Jitsi Meet is e2ee though. I mention Wire because it may be e2ee (check). BigBlueButton is pretty well known too but I have never used it. Keep in mind not many conferencing solutions are e2ee.
Element/Matrix is the other tech I hear people talk about a lot. Not sure it is really a meeting alternative though.
Wire is open source and e2ee
I am glad you mentioned wire. Not many true conferencing apps are e2ee. Have you tried wire youself? What do you think in terms of pros and cons?
I did not mention myself because I have not used.
Thanks.
Might want to run down through the standard list by popularity and choose based on your needs: https://alternativeto.net/software/zoom-cloud-meetings/
Keep in mind Signal can do some conferencing too. So look at some of the real time communication tools tool at https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication/ .
Thing about conferencing is a lot of the large conferencing tools are not that secure in terms of full end to end encryption and they generally need a lot of infrastructure to support a lot of people so there is a question of who runs it and who pays for it and who secures it.
I will be interested in what others say.
Signal could be a good replacement, if it allows sharing a meeting link. Otherwise, you have to create a group for each meeting.
Proton Mail uses PGP which depends on which cipher both recipient and sender, sharing PGP keys are also problematic. PGP doesn't encrypt subject line but Tutanota does. Tutanota uses AES-128 and RSA-2048 for their encryption and uses AES-128 for external encrypted email which Tutanota and Proton Mail also supports.
Tutanota first use the user password to generate an AES key using BCrypt, that AES key is then used to encrypt the private key. The encrypted private key and hashed AES key is then sent to the server, hence the server does not store nor know the private key and the hashed AES key is used to authenticate the user. It uses SHA256 for hashing, it's safe because the hashing algorithm is one way only and not reversible, meaning you can't convert the hash to the password but only the other way around the password can generate the hash, so even the server is compromised it doesn't gain access to your password.
Subject lines and recipient/sender email addresses are encrypted but not end-to-end encrypted for Proton Mail.