There's no "phoning home". What I think you're talking about is that Element Web's default config specifies the identity lookup server at vector.im: https://gi

There's no "phoning home". What I think you're talking about is that Element Web's default config specifies the identity lookup server at vector.im: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/blob/develop/config.sample.json#L8 https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/blob/develop/config.... The identity server is optional, and just used for looking up matrix IDs based on email address or phone number. When Element Web launches is currently checks if your config is valid (i.e. do these URLs actually point to valid servers?). If you're running your own deployment with your own server, then you'd point the config to whatever identity server you wanted, or just remove it entirely - just as you'd point the config to default to your own homeserver. We have a separate bug to defer the server validation check until the user actually tries to talk to the identity (or home) server, but it hasn't got to the top of the todo list yet; patches welcome! Edit: To clarify: this behaviour only occurs with Element Web (rather than Matrix clients or servers in general)