What happens in the matrix channels where there are no more users ? Where goes the messages ?
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I've been asking myself this question for a while now, I've been using Matrix with Element for almost a year. And I realized quite quickly that it was not possible to delete a channel. What we do today when we don't need a channel anymore, is that everyone leaves the channel and it doesn't appear for any of us anymore. We all use end-to-end encryption and we would like to know, from the moment when there are no more people in the channel, do the messages in the channel remain stored on the server? Are they still encrypted? Are they recoverable? How does it work on the matrix side or element side once there is no one in the channel?
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All very good questions, I don't have much answers, but for sure, if they are not purged from the synapse server, they will remain encrypted as the server anyways has no way to decrypt.
I guess you have to read up on this with the synapse documentation or faq.
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I've already tried to go through the FAQs and forums by asking this question and nobody seems to know what happens to it so I will try to get a little more interested in the documentation in detail.
If I have the answer to the question, I will post it here.If someone else has an idea or the answer to the question, that they do not hesitate to put a message, it's a question that has been bothering us for quite some time now.
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@Dont-Worry I'm not sure, but I think I perhaps remember readings something about this here https://matrix.org/legal/privacy-notice/
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Hi @jdaviescoates , thanks !
Didn't found my answer in it
Unfortunately, there is nothing in it that refers to the removal of the rooms, or at least what happens on the Matrix side when you remove a room. And in addition, most of what is said in this document concerns the use of public matrix servers. However, this does not apply in the majority of cases for people like us who own our own matrix servers. -
@Dont-Worry said in What happens in the matrix channels where there are no more users ? Where goes the messages ?:
However, this does not apply in the majority of cases for people like us who own our own matrix servers.
That only true if only your own users use your server and you don't have any federation. I'd guess that in most cases even people like us who are self hosting our Matrix/ Element also use that server to interact with people with different homeservers (and so all messages end up on their servers too).
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@jdaviescoates That's our case. I should maybe mention it.
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@Dont-Worry it looks like you can set message retention policies https://github.com/element-hq/synapse/blob/develop/docs/message_retention_policies.md
More info here:
https://brendan.abolivier.bzh/matrix-retention-policies/ -
This is very interesting @jdaviescoates thank you for this. I'll examinate this more deeply !
