Plex Relay Service. We may provide, and you may choose to use, the Plex Relay Service to connect or stream your Personal Content to another device. If you choose to use the Plex Relay Service, we will transfer the data necessary to perform the service.
Can someone from the Plex team please tell me where this choice to enable or disable Plex Relay is in my server settings? Because as far as I understand since the introduction of this “service” there is no way for me to disable it without manually breaking the PlexRelay process myself. If a user does not have explicit granted (by me) access to my network, that user can and will use the Plex Relay service (if it is so functional) without my consent to access my Plex Media Server.
So I ask again Plex team, where can one disable and thus “not use” this Plex Relay service “if I choose to?”
@IamSpartacus said:
If a user does not have explicit granted (by me) access to my network, that user can and will use the Plex Relay service (if it is so functional) without my consent to access my Plex Media Server.
That’s simply incorrect. Assuming you haven’t set up your Plex Media Server either to not require authentication to access it (which it does by default) or your network is set up in such a(n unusual) way as to make all requests appear to be local and from the server host machine, then all access to the server has to be authenticated. That means that only your owner/admin account or one that you’ve explicitly shared your server/libraries with is allowed to access the server.
And, incidentally, none of that has anything to do with our “Relay” service or Remote Access in general.
So I ask again Plex team, where can one disable and thus “not use” this Plex Relay service “if I choose to?”
The “Relay” service can only be used if you’ve enabled Remote Access on your server. So, if you want to ensure it’s never used, then you can disable Remote Access. If you do enable Remote Access and it’s successfully configured (so that apps can make a direct connection), then a “Relay” connection won’t be used and the direct connection will always be preferred for non-local access.
@IamSpartacus said:
If a user does not have explicit granted (by me) access to my network, that user can and will use the Plex Relay service (if it is so functional) without my consent to access my Plex Media Server.
That’s simply incorrect. Assuming you haven’t set up your Plex Media Server either to not require authentication to access it (which it does by default) or your network is set up in such a(n unusual) way as to make all requests appear to be local and from the server host machine, then all access to the server has to be authenticated. That means that only your owner/admin account or one that you’ve explicitly shared your server/libraries with is allowed to access the server.
And, incidentally, none of that has anything to do with our “Relay” service or Remote Access in general.
So I ask again Plex team, where can one disable and thus “not use” this Plex Relay service “if I choose to?”
The “Relay” service can only be used if you’ve enabled Remote Access on your server. So, if you want to ensure it’s never used, then you can disable Remote Access. If you do enable Remote Access and it’s successfully configured (so that apps can make a direct connection), then a “Relay” connection won’t be used and the direct connection will always be preferred for non-local access.
The problem I have is with Plex TOS explicitly saying that one can choose the use the Plex Relay feature not. That is simply not the case. If I have granted remote users access but have configured my firewall to only allow incoming connections to it from “trusted” networks (ie. so my users aren’t accessing my PMS from their work or other public networks), the Plex Relay service will circumvent the restrictions I’ve put in place by being the middle man network.
As it stands I manually break the PlexRelay process upon each PMS update to prevent the above from happening but it’s certainly a PITA to have to do so with each update. So please give us a real way to disable it or re-write the TOS.
PERMISSION TO USE USER CONTENT. You continue to retain any ownership rights you have in the User Content you make available to Plex. However, by submitting or making available any type of User Content, you automatically and hereby grant to Plex a perpetual, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable and non-exclusive right and license to adopt, publish, reproduce, disseminate, transmit, distribute, copy, use, create derivative works of, and display (in whole or in part) worldwide, or act on any such User Content, without additional approval or consideration, in furtherance of and in connection with the operation of the Plex Solution, and you hereby waive any claim to the contrary. You specifically acknowledge that the Plex Solution facilitates distribution of the User Content, and you hereby grant to any user with whom you share content a non-exclusive license to access the User Content through the Plex Solution, and to use, reproduce in copies, distribute, display and perform the shared User Content as permitted through the functionality of the Plex Solution. You represent that you have all necessary rights to make the foregoing grants and to otherwise make User Content(s) available to Plex and for (and through) the Plex Solution.
Basically they can download your library of files and do whatever the fk they want with it. Sweet. I’m done with Plex. I don’t have to wonder if they will do the right thing now I know they will not.
Is there any intention to either give users the ability to disable Plex Relay or update the wording as to not give users the idea they have such a choice?
@IamSpartacus - we discussed this internally and will be updating the privacy policy to make the current behavior more clear. We will also consider adding a feature that allows users to disable Relay if they have remote connections enabled. I can’t promise a time frame here but we’re going to look into it.
