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My friend asked me if it possible to get somebody's IP from Google Meet just by being in the same meeting. He found a video that says it is possible.

But when I read about webRTC and STUN servers, I got conflicting information. One side told that leak is possible and this is a weakness of this protocol. And on the other side, I read it's not possible. I read some about STUN server which works like an intermediary but I have some doubts.

So what is the truth?

schroeder
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Furman
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1 Answers1

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Google Meet is an application based on WebRTC technology stack.

Instead of relaying the video through a central server, all members connect to each other and peer to peer share their information.

Joining a google meet causes your browser to talk with STUN servers to see their IP and those are send to the Google Meet servers to be send to other participants. You receive the ip's of the others. Most browsers also share their LAN ip addresses if video/microphone access is granted before joining, which helps improve the speed if both people are in the same network.

You can use browser dev tools to see the IP address, or just look at a network monitor tool to see which IP your PC talks to.

Ferrybig
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  • So the ip's and other data is not crypted ? – Furman Feb 14 '22 at 11:37
  • IPs cannot be encrypted if you are connecting directly or else your computer would have no idea where to connect. – schroeder Feb 14 '22 at 11:41
  • So when i connect to any webRTC server every connected user got my IP. Wow i was thinking all data is distributing by server and only IP which users got is server's. – Furman Feb 14 '22 at 12:04
  • @Furman Distributing the data via a central server would require insane bandwidth – Ferrybig Feb 14 '22 at 13:22