Friendica Social Network (Leipzig)

feld

1 Tag her •

feld
1 Tag her •

I wrote a #DeltaChat blog post for technical users who are skeptical about how it works

Everything You Think You Know About DeltaChat Is Wrong

https://blog.feld.me/posts/2025/03/deltachat-is-actually-good-though/

@delta

Everything You Think You Know About DeltaChat Is Wrong – Makefile.feld

I am smitten with DeltaChat... DeltaChat has been making massive strides lately and I think you should consider using it as your full time secure messenger.

^blog.feld.me

#deltachat @Delta Chat

Fabrice Desré 1 Tag her •

Good write up, thanks! One question: when 2 people are in a conversation, are there any persisted logs of the exchanges between the 2 random email addresses?

#chatmail servers do not keep persistent logs, and only the end-devices have the readable messages of a conversation. Servers briefly see an end-to-end encrypted message but it gets removed after the app downloaded it.

#chatmail

rohden 1 Tag her •

#chatmail if a single device setup is used end-to-end encrypted message get removed after the app downloaded it. The situation is different for multi device setups, right?

#chatmail

feld 1 Tag her •

Correct, it's left on the server so other devices can get a copy. I don't know if there are plans to solve this with Iroh device to device connections yet but it would be possible

Delta Chat 1 Tag her •

it's still an evolving discussion. World-wide, multi-device setups are an edge case. On the fediverse, single-device-only is an edge case likely.

FWIW introducing some form of multi-device P2P syncing (preferably without requring that both devices are online -- there are actually ways to achieve that) would mean that #chatmail servers can always remove delivered mails, further minimizing costs of operating a chatmail server which is already exceptionally cheap.

#chatmail

Matthieu Weber 🇫🇷/🇫🇮 15 Stunden her •

so at the moment the registration feature of chatmail makes it vulnerable to a DoS attack. It does not break the confidentiality of the messages, but it could make the service unusable for the users of that server. Did I get this right?

Delta Chat 15 Stunden her •

yes, many chatmail servers are not ddos protected likely. Some run in environments where ddos protection exists.
Fwiw ddossing all email servers world wide is probably a daunting task and would bring most governments and institutions to a grinding halt.

We have stopped publishing about new chatmail server setups half a year ago btw and are to devise a decentralized way to distribute information about chatmail servers. We don't want to provide public block lists, basically.

Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (15 Stunden her)

Roland OE1RSA 12 Stunden her •

One of the promises long ago as I started using DC was its interoperability with classic email and that it works with a standard server setup. From reading the blogpost I get the impression these features all are going to be dropped in favour of just another chat (protocol ). I might have misread the post, but dropping above said features would give rise for me to look for another protocol/messenger.
@delta

@Delta Chat

Delta Chat 12 Stunden her •

There are existing users with own email setups using different stacks such as Exim mail server and we are not dropping support for them. You can always self-host an email server and use Delta Chat with it. You might not get push notifications because there is still no standard for e.g. WebPush on IMAP, but all other features work exactly the same with chatmail and with other standard email setups that can speak SMTP and IMAP.
@feld

@feld

l 12 Stunden her •

We also have users with 9front upas mail setup and i previously made sure delta chat works with something called "Winmail Pro for Linux" that has broken implementation of IMAP "SELECT" command by installing it into VM to debug. Delta Chat is also reportedly used with "Binc IMAP" server.

Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (12 Stunden her)

Lionel CoupouchettyRamouchetty 9 Stunden her •

Hi and thanks for your blog post. I must say I was skeptical at first as I had already tried deltachat and I wasn't convinced. At the time I was under the impression that the main advantage of deltachat over other IM services was that there was no need for creating another account. I just used existing email accounts and then hit (as expected) the issues mentioned in your post among others.

It's a shame because I think that was the one thing that could have made DeltaChat worth the try for non technical user.

I can see myself use it, as a concerned, motivated "technically educated" user but it seems it's not mature enough for ordinary people, as I read some features are missing regarding user-friendliness and a lot of people in my contacts list would just dismiss it if it doesn't show the same level of features as what they're currently using.

In the meantime the best middle ground I found was matrix with a select list of bridges but I'm not losing hope of finding some better alternative so I'll definitely keep an eye on DeltaChat.

Delta Chat 9 Stunden her •

chatmail addresses are not like classic email accounts or any other regular platforms's accounts for that matter. A chatmail address by default keeps no data. There is no registration data other than the password. It's really just about taking control of an address. This is why we rarely talk about "accounts" because everyone is used to this being a heavy bag of collected data and state.

Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (9 Stunden her)

Delta Chat hat dies geteilt

Léon van Kammen 6 Stunden her •

Personally I look at deltachat/chatmail as email v2 a la carte.
I use it in classic unencrypted mode for one [classic] email account, and another [chatmail] account for encrypted DM's.

Btw. what happens if we both change our chatmail adress to 'john@samemailchatserver.io'?

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