Why must Matrix (Element) be so damn complicated?
Why must Matrix (Element) be so damn complicated?
Title. Key management is so not intuitive at all. You have your session verification key in case you have no access to another session. Fine, i totally understand. Then you have E2E room keys you can either backup on your homeserver or in a file. Fine, except not so much. I exported my room keys to a backup file and deleted them from my homeserver. I signed out of element completely. I sign back in just fine, i verify my session with my session verification key just fine. I import my E2E room keys and see 32/32 keys imported success. Great. One encrypted room shows my historyperfect, the other "Waiting for this message, this may take a while". Exactly why is this? Every key imported fine so why arent all messages in all rooms decrypted?
Let's hope MLS solves some of this, but there is a certain amount of necessary complexity with syncing encryption keys for groups as people come and go.
I'm very annoyed by issues decrypting messages in private conversations. Nothing is changing, so it should just work after the first message, but no. Random messages can't be decrypted unless I refresh. Very frustrating.
I don't have any answers, but I feel your pain.
Legit though, any encrypted messenger has some degree of hoops to jump through
Yep. I keep trolling the issue around giving an option to disable encryption entirely because it is terrible and thus almost useless.
A lot of times it is honestly not necessary... you are in a group with 300 unknown people. How is that private?
Part of the value proposition of e2e encryption is to protect against a server admin who wants to snoop on who or what you are saying to anyone.
Those 300 people cannot get a full picture of all your activity and you are willingly giving them whatever information they are seeing. The server admin doesn't have to be in any chats and you will likely have no idea they are snooping on you.
Permanently Deleted
Matrix really needs to improve the UX around session verification and key management. Otherwise nobody is going to take it seriously.