After this announcement, I am planning to reject meetings organised in zoom. But the problem is that it’s really good.
So, is there any privacy friendly and viable alternatives to zoom?
It does not have to be open source because I nearly tried all alternatives.
Your experiences?
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.
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.
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.
nextcloud talk can also be an alternative (open source and self-hosted).
but I think the whole nextcloud suite is more suited as a hub for a (small?) business, not necessarily great for, lets say, family videocalls (due to the necessity of having an administrator who runs it).
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.
Jitsi, perhaps matrix (element), signal (has tell number) works too. Threema also added video into it… and an unpopular one brave (has it without signing in, within the browser)
It’s amazing. You can do peer-to-peer video chat. Nobody else can see it. It’s open source. You can host it on anything. If you just want to have a video call with a bunch of people you can make a jitsi link to share it with all of them. You can embed it in a calendar invite.
If you use matrix or element they have jitsi support baked in now or at least in beta.
As far as wire signal and the other end-to-end encrypted messengers go they don’t really do group calls well. So jitsi the best for getting groups of people to work together
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.
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Jitsi would be my choice.
https://meet.jit.si/
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.
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.
Subject lines and recipient/sender email addresses are encrypted but not end-to-end encrypted for Proton Mail.
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.
It seems that the user deleted his tweet. https://mashable.com/article/zoom-use-calls-train-ai-artificial-intelligence
nextcloud talk can also be an alternative (open source and self-hosted).
but I think the whole nextcloud suite is more suited as a hub for a (small?) business, not necessarily great for, lets say, family videocalls (due to the necessity of having an administrator who runs it).
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!
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.
Also for the commercial guys, GoTo Meetings and Cisco Webex are pretty well known.
Skype can also do some conferencing too.
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.
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.
Jitsi, perhaps matrix (element), signal (has tell number) works too. Threema also added video into it… and an unpopular one brave (has it without signing in, within the browser)
I’m really surprised privacy guides doesn’t include jitsi… You can self-host if your very paranoid.
GROUP CALLS! OPEN SOURCE! SELF hOSTING FRIENDLY. Join with a link in any web browser
https://jitsi.org/
It’s amazing. You can do peer-to-peer video chat. Nobody else can see it. It’s open source. You can host it on anything. If you just want to have a video call with a bunch of people you can make a jitsi link to share it with all of them. You can embed it in a calendar invite.
If you use matrix or element they have jitsi support baked in now or at least in beta.
As far as wire signal and the other end-to-end encrypted messengers go they don’t really do group calls well. So jitsi the best for getting groups of people to work together
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.
If you want privacy-friendly, you really do want something that’s open source. Jitsi is probably your best bet.
You beat me to it for recommending Jitsi.
@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.
https://meet.livekit.io