Confusing error "The sender has blocked you from receiving this message"

[jaywink]

Steps to reproduce

Reporting on behalf of another user in the community.

• User has a mobile session working fine and a DM with another user. Both see their messages.
• User signs into Element Desktop but doesn't remember their security passphrase, and thus cannot access their encryption keys.
• Secure backup is confirmed to be not set up in either session
• "only send to verified devices" is confirmed off in their settings, both sessions

Outcome

What did you expect?

An error message indicating that messages cannot be decrypted due to missing keys.

What happened instead?

User sees "The sender has blocked you from receiving this message" which is not true as the sender has not blocked delivering keys to them, and as a non-technical user they thought the other user had blocked them (knowing it not to be true).

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk/pull/10202 looks like the pr that changed this message.

Additionally, the top of the screen shows a message saying:

Reset your keys to prevent future decryption errors

This is also a bit misleading. The user never set up secure backup in the first place it seems. Would expect it to just say "Set up secure backup".

Rageshake logs: https://github.com/matrix-org/element-web-rageshakes/issues/20438

Operating system

Windows

Application version

1.11.24

How did you install the app?

No response

Homeserver

No response

Will you send logs?

Yes

[JeanPaulLucien]

I detected this issue too. Element Web 1.11.29.

[rusty-tendrils]

I have this issue now.

[iSaluki]

Issue is impacting me too

[violet4]

i'm also experiencing this between my desktop element -> docker synapse <- element ios. the ios version can see the messges from desktop but desktop can't see the messages from ios

EDIT: realized it was because i had enabled "never send messages to untrusted sessions" and i hadn't verified. once i figured out how to verify (which i got a bit confused along the way with some unexpected behaviors), it worked just fine and no more failed-to-encrypt messages.

[sl5net]

Issue is impacting me too when (happens always she write. idk whey) : She using ios and i Android - and Desktop - Version.

[anhdres]

I have this issue as well.

[FlagPonder]

I have this issue as well. I show the verified status and have no issues with Android to Android messages but from Desktop to Phone or phone to desktop I get "The sender has blocked you from receiving messages. Any suggestions would be most appreciated. :smile:

[AstralStorm]

We have found the same issue with the message in Element Desktop and Element for Android too. It can likely arise if the sender has set "Encryption: Manually verify all remote sessions" Enabled on a channel where they haven't verified everyone, with the following info inside but the aforementioned misleading message shown.

The message then has such thing in raw source:

"msgtype": "m.bad.encrypted",
"body": "** Unable to decrypt: DecryptionError: The sender has disabled encrypting to unverified devices. **"

It should say the latter part of the body instead.

The problem is additionally that we cannot toggle that security option per room for some reason.

[iaxat]

This is probably the most annoying part of using Element.

[RealSleepi]

i am experiencing this issue aswell, however i have secure backup enabled. both my devices show that the session(s) are verified.