Hello Element folks, By the time you read this, desktop and web users should be on Element 1.7.8 (if not, please upgrade!) We have a round up of highlights for you from the last few Element Web updates; 1.7.6, 1.7.7 and 1.7.8.

The NHSX and National Commercial and Procurement Hub has announced its Clinical Communications Procurement Framework. The initiative is aimed at helping NHS trusts phase out pagers and reduce reliance on email by the end of 2021, by adopting modern communication tools. To be included on the Framework, technologies needed to be able to demonstrate that they save time for individuals and teams, support patient transfers of care, and are scalable across the NHS.

In something reminiscent of David and Goliath, the stone of Max Schrems’ landmark legal challenge has shattered the Privacy Shield that protects centralised service providers. This is a really big deal. It means that the personal data of an EU data subject (‘person’) cannot be transferred from within the EU to the US without an appropriate mechanism.

Hopefully by now you have all upgraded to Element, with Android users leaving behind the old legacy Riot Android app. If you haven’t already been previewing it via RiotX (which has been in beta for a year now), it should hopefully feel like a game changer: as we said in our Welcome to Element post, we’ve got more than just a rebrand going on here! But let’s rewind a bit.

Although Element is working with companies around the world, our busiest region is Europe and in particular European governments and public sector organisations. There are multiple reasons, but three of the biggest are: Data ownership, open collaboration and privacy are driving the use of Matrix Element’s messaging and collaboration solution, being based on the open source Matrix project, is decentralised.

Hi everyone, We are incredibly excited to announce that Riot is now Element! In fact we have simplified all our naming: Element is also the name for New Vector (the company behind Riot) while Modular, our flagship Matrix hosting service, has become Element Matrix Services. For those discovering us for the first time: Element is the flagship secure collaboration app for the decentralised Matrix communication network.

Hi all, It's almost four years since we launched Riot, and it's been a crazy journey - going from a relatively bare bones Matrix app through to today's all-singing, all-dancing encrypted-by-default collaboration tool used by folks ranging from Mozilla to the French Government and beyond. However, as some may know, we’ve had a few problems with the name Riot over the years.

Hey lovely Riot folks, Welcome to the Riot Web 1.6.6 update. This is a relatively incremental release, but we do have a few feature updates alongside all the normal bug and performance fixes.

Hello everyone! We’ve released a few updates for Riot today, grouped under the logically titled 1.6.3 (guess what the previous update was called...more on that later). Heads up that 1.6.3 is a security update, so please upgrade - many thanks to Quentin Gliech for reporting a vulnerability in single sign-on (SSO) deployments where Riot could be confused into sending authentication details to an attacker-controlled server. We are not aware of this being abused in practice.

Hi folks, We are incredibly excited to present the biggest change in Riot ever: as of the last 24 hours we are enabling end-to-end encryption by default for all new non-public conversations, together with a complete rework of Riot’s user experience around E2E encryption, powered by a whole new suite of encryption features in Matrix. We have released this simultaneously on Web, Desktop, iOS and RiotX Android! The things we needed to fix to turn on E2EE by default were...