@ -590,6 +590,28 @@ You can also run Vector, the code that Riot.im uses, on your own server. It's a
There are several, but they don't have all the features that synapse has. Check the list of clients on [matrix.org](http://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html#clients).
##### Why can't end-to-end encryption be turned off?
When encryption is enabled in a room, a flag is set in the room state, so that
all clients know to encrypt any messages they send. The room state stores
information about the room like the topic, the avatar, and the membership list.
Imagine if encryption could be turned off the same way as it is turned
on. Anyone with admin rights in the room could clear the flag and then messages
would start being transmitted unencrypted. It would be very easy for a user to
miss the change in configuration, and accidentally send a sensitive message
without encryption.
Worse yet, anyone with sysadmin access to a server could also clear the flag
(remember that the main reason for using e2e encryption is that we don't trust
the sysadmins), and could then easily read any sensitive content which was
sent.
The solution we have taken for now is to make clients ignore any requests to
disable encryption. We might experiment with ways to improve this in the future
- for instance, by alerting the user next time they try to send a message in
Richard van der Hoff
8 years ago