this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2021
41 points (100.0% liked)
Privacy
31265 readers
525 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I wish I could like XMPP, I really do, but no client I have used has a block function properly implemented, as in, you can't unblock people you have blocked, and I tested it with a friend a few weeks ago and found that clients that don't properly implement a block function (as in, not even letting you block anyone) can easily message someone who has blocked them from another client. This is an immediate No for a chat protocol in my opinion
Personally I don't think blocking is that important, because most of the time problems can be resolved in another way, like ignoring the messages. However, it can be necessary in extreme cases, and in fact it is already implemented in XMPP at the server level, as I understand. So there are probably many clients that support blocking whichever JID's you desire. I myself have used the blocking feature in the past.
For me, blocking is one of the most important features any social app (chats, social media, etc) should have. I tried using Jabber to block my friend and had them message me from Xabber (from which I was entirely unable to block anyone), and their messages came through just fine. Months before that test, I had tried to test blocking someone else, but was unable to unblock them, even though all my clients said they weren't blocked. I simply remained unable to message them, and the client kept telling me I had blocked their JID.
Could this have been an issue with the server I was using?
What client were you testing? It's worth a bugreport if the block feature didn't work as expected
It's possible that the implementation leaves something to be desired. Because I have used this feature so little myself, I will have to investigate to see what is truly going on and know how the server handles it vs. how the client handles it. I am currently using Converations on my phone with a Disroot account, and I have someone blocked. When I go into "Account details" I can open "Show block list" in the drop-down menu and they are still there. (As they should be, lol.) I can hold down on it and elect to unblock them. My understanding is that the server keeps this list and doesn't allow messages directly from that JID to even be delivered to my client. I can also imagine some clients not being aware of this at all.
Even though I blocked their JID, it's possible we both can be in the same MUC and I get messages from them through the MUC itself. I'm not sure if it's possible to block that without help from the MUC's admin.
Edit: One caveat here is that if you block individual JID's, someone could create more JID's with which to message you. Some XMPP servers have this behavior whereby they silently delete all incoming messages from people you haven't added to your roster, so this "add-first" policy helps them keep out spam. Ideally you would be able to contact your server admin in cases of abuse if it would become necessary to block problematic servers or warn the admins of said servers of abuse.
Yes that is not possible as only MUC admins actually know the real user JID (privacy feature), so a client can not know that the person in the MUC with the pseudonymous nick "marmulak" is the same user as the "marmulak@example.com" on your block-list.