A popular, secure video conferencing app has just ditched the most important feature that has long been the favorite of activists, journalists, and anyone looking for extra privacy: user anonymity.
Completely free to use, Jitsi Meet is an encrypted and open-source platform available for both web and mobile. Jitsi has increasingly become a privacy-first alternative to Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, as people can use the service without an account. At least until now.
As of August 24, 2023, users must use a Gmail, Facebook, or GitHub account to create a meeting room on meet.jit.si. And while the new authentication requirement doesn’t apply to invitees, people are now concerned about how this change will affect Jitsi’s overall level of privacy and security.
The new authentication requirements of Jitsi Meet
“When we launched the service in 2013, our goal was to provide a meeting experience with as little friction as possible and as much privacy as possible,” Jitsi noted in a blog postdescribing Meet as a means for users to talk freely “without fear of expressing their views and opinions.”
“Our commitment to both goals remains as strong as ever, but anonymity will no longer be one of the tools we use to achieve them.”
An increase in reports of Terms of Service violations is said to be the reason why the team finally decided to implement the change. Despite not specifying the nature of the violations, the provider made sure it wasn’t about “some people just saying things that others didn’t like.”
We’ve reached out to the company for further comment on this, but at the time of writing, we’re still awaiting a response. But when we searched online, we found it some worrying messages: A user complained about rooms playing videos of underage people, while another user reported that an unauthorized third party joined the conversation.
Nevertheless, some users expressed disappointment with the new authentication requirement.
Jitsi’s official body now requires you to authenticate with Facebook, Google or Microsoft to host a conversation by r/privacy
Still, Jitsi confirmed that encryption will continue to secure all users’ communications against data leaks and/or other espionage activities.
At the same time, according to the update of its privacy policythe developer company (8×8) can now “process and store third-party account credentials to authenticate meet.jit.si users” while using this information to “investigate fraud or abuse on the meet.jit.si service.”
Speaking of additional ways to ensure user privacy, Jitsi said, “We are still very committed to keeping user privacy as a top priority and we still don’t have tools that allow us to protect the privacy of the actual audio content. or video content from a computer. meeting, nor do we intend to create one.”
The provider also invites anyone who feels uncomfortable using an account to access the service to view the tutorial host their own secure deployment from Jitsi Meet.
While Facebook, Google and GitHub are the only accounts available to host new meetings, the Jitsi team said the list could expand to other services in the future.