2020-04-05 Jitsi Considerations

Here are some things to look out for:

1. Does your Jitsi instance use things that enable tracking, such as Google Analytics, Google Fonts, Google STUN servers?

2. Does your Jitsi instance have a decent privacy policy, such as minimal logging, no sharing with third parties, and so on?

3. If you’re self-hosting, have you considered these issues?

4. Make sure people only use the apps, or Chrome – apparently Safari doesn’t work and Firefox ruins the experience for everybody else in the meeting

5. Understand that all the apps except for the one on the F-Droid store for Android come with trackers

This is based on the following sources:

1. Good info by Freifunk München on how to use Jitsi, and a link to their instance

2. Also, an app for the desktop based on Electron, so at least you don’t have to run Google Chrome

3. Privacy Tools on Zoom vs. Jitsi, listing some of the issues with Jitsi

info by Freifunk München

an app for the desktop

Privacy Tools on Zoom vs. Jitsi

​#Jitsi ​#Administration

Comments

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I installed the Debian package for the Freifunk Jitsi app and that worked just fine.

alex@melanobombus:~$ **sudo dpkg -i Downloads/ffmuc-meet-amd64.deb**
[sudo] password for alex:
Selecting previously unselected package jitsi-meet-electron.
(Reading database ... 498341 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack Downloads/ffmuc-meet-amd64.deb ...
Unpacking jitsi-meet-electron (2.0.4-31) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of jitsi-meet-electron:
 jitsi-meet-electron depends on libappindicator3-1; however:
  Package libappindicator3-1 is not installed.

dpkg: error processing package jitsi-meet-electron (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.31.4-3) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.62) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.23-4) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.17-2) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 jitsi-meet-electron
alex@melanobombus:~$ **apt search libappindicator3-1**
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
gir1.2-appindicator3-0.1/amber 0.4.92-7 amd64
  Typelib files for libappindicator3-1

libappindicator3-1/amber 0.4.92-7 amd64
  allow applications to export a menu into the panel -- GTK3 version

alex@melanobombus:~$ **sudo apt install libappindicator3-1**
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
You might want to run 'apt --fix-broken install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libappindicator3-1 : Depends: libindicator3-7 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt --fix-broken install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
alex@melanobombus:~$ **sudo apt --fix-broken install**
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  libappindicator3-1 libindicator3-7
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libappindicator3-1 libindicator3-7
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 106 kB of archives.
After this operation, 217 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
Get:1 https://repo.pureos.net/pureos amber/main amd64 libindicator3-7 amd64 0.5.0-4 [52.9 kB]
Get:2 https://repo.pureos.net/pureos amber/main amd64 libappindicator3-1 amd64 0.4.92-7 [53.5 kB]
Fetched 106 kB in 1s (187 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package libindicator3-7:amd64.
(Reading database ... 498429 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libindicator3-7_0.5.0-4_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libindicator3-7:amd64 (0.5.0-4) ...
Selecting previously unselected package libappindicator3-1:amd64.
Preparing to unpack .../libappindicator3-1_0.4.92-7_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libappindicator3-1:amd64 (0.4.92-7) ...
Setting up libindicator3-7:amd64 (0.5.0-4) ...
Setting up libappindicator3-1:amd64 (0.4.92-7) ...
Setting up jitsi-meet-electron (2.0.4-31) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.28-10) ...

OK, there was this little problem because I didn’t know how to install a package from a file and satisfy all its dependency from the regular repos.

Also, I’m starting to feel like installing all this stuff from packages I download myself is a security nightmare. These packages are never going to get fixed! 😟

– Alex Schroeder 2020-04-05 12:14 UTC