14 ms·

Delta Chat – decentralized chat via email

220 points by buster 6y ago

eudajmonia 6y ago
I like it. Some of the best ideas are the simple ones.
jlelse 6y ago
I recently blogged about it [1] and think Delta Chat is the messenger we should migrate to. Email is decentralized (at least when not everybody is using Gmail) and isn't a silo like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and Threema. Because what happens when Signal goes bad? Everyone has to move again... [1]: https://jlelse.blog/posts/email-messenger-delta-chat https://jlelse.blog/posts/email-messenger-delta-chat
- dheera 6y ago
  I also don't like that Signal relies on phone numbers or a QR code from a phone to log in. Phone numbers are traceable to identities. They really should have used usernames or e-mail addresses. Also, Signal's desktop app shouldn't require a stupid phone app to enable it. I have a big powerful setup on my desk and you're asking me to go around my house looking for a silly 6" device to give it permission to log in? That's backwards. It should be the other way around if anything.
  - jitans 6y ago
    And leaking a mail (with real names) is much better?
    - dheera 6y ago
      E-mail doesn't have to have real names, isn't regulated by the government, and the same ID can be used across the world.
    - SahAssar 6y ago
      Yes. Phone numbers are linked to a physical device (a SIM card or similar) or a contract (with a provider). An email does not need to contain a real name, and I'd say it's much easier for me to get a email with a temporary identity than it is to get a phone number for the same.
      - dheera 6y ago
        Not only that, but many countries have regulation that requires providing some form of government ID to obtain a phone number, even a virtual one.
    - throwawayboise 6y ago
      It takes 5 minutes to set up a new email account just for this app if you want to do so...
    - gsich 6y ago
      Yes, because you can choose if you want your name in your address.
- beagle3 6y ago
  My only gripe with delta chat is that the metadata most email stores keep per email message is measured in kilobytes (sometimes tens of them). View-source is very enlightening. For email messages which are often 1K-200K themselves with attachments, and somtimes > 10MB, I guess it's acceptable. For one line "How about lunch today?" messages, it just hurts my engineer bones to use Delta-Chat on a regular email server.
  - jlelse 6y ago
    They are working on it https://delta.chat/en/2020-03-11-reduced-message-size https://delta.chat/en/2020-03-11-reduced-message-size
  - buster 6y ago
    Yes, i'd guess a simple message might start at around 1kB and in a chat application you probably never exceed 2kB. Considering the massive amount of data i can store on even the cheapest smart phone, the available bandwidth even under bad conditions, i'd say, that's a totally acceptable size. It could be less for sure, but it's not bad. And it's plain text, so storage is not even a problem, it's easily compressed! Now, don't let me compare 1kB data download to visiting a website and all the crapload i download for the simplest webpage nowadays...
    - beagle3 6y ago
      I agree, in the grand scheme of everything internet/web, it’s not even a rounding error. And yet, the 2000% overhead is viscerally bothering me. I’m not even saying “there must be a better way” - it is quite possible that there isn’t given the politics involved and the incumbents. Delta is usable, today, with everyone; no need for buy in from your addressees. But, it still hurts.
      - buster 6y ago
        Yep. Actually, i've used it now with some friends and it works very well. Part of them is only using email, 2 are using the apps. Two quirks: 1. Of course your mail provider needs to have IMAP enabled (some corporate outlook/exchange installations do not). 2. It could be a problem if you mail provider has a limit on maximum mails per day. I've not experienced that problem, but still..
- 6ak74rfy 6y ago
  > think Delta Chat is the messenger we should migrate to. Not really. WhatsApp and Signal allow you to place audio and video calls, Delta Chat (by design) can't. And that's critical for folks who have families and friends in other countries.
  - jlelse 6y ago
    It has a feature for video calls.
progre 6y ago
End to end encrypted? https://delta.chat/en/help#does-delta-chat-support-end-to-end-encryption https://delta.chat/en/help#does-delta-chat-support-end-to-en... Yes, if receiver uses IMAP if I understand this correctly. Edit: End-to-end encryption or not is maybe unrelated to IMAP use. E2E Encryption does not work with some email providers though.
- zigzaggy 6y ago
  Does that mean the iOS app isn’t encrypted? (Guess I could just go check the source code instead of being lazy)
  - progre 6y ago
    Uh, I don't think IMAP is generally blocked on iOS? Anyway, end-to-end encryption seems to depend on the email provider being able to support IMAP. So Hey.com is out but gmail can work if you enable IMAP support for example. Here is a list of tested providers: https://providers.delta.chat/ https://providers.delta.chat/
    - tuuxi 6y ago
      IMAP is not blocked by iOS. Also, end-to-end-encryption is not related directly to IMAP. The issue with Hey/Protonmail/Tutanota is that they do not offer IMAP- or other standard-protocol-support - so you can just not log in with Delta Chat (nor with any other e-mail-client) to your Hey/Protonmail/Tutanota account. If you log in to deltachat say with Posteo, you can write to other Hey/Protonmail/Tutanota accounts - but as the recipient cannot use Delta or other Autocrypt capable clients (Enigmail, K9), things cannot be encrypted. If Hey/Protonmail/Tutanota would support Autocrypt in their webclients, of course, this can change.
- h_anna_h 6y ago
  It does not say anything about IMAP there. It just says that it is in fact end to end encrypted.
  - 6y ago
tdrgabi 6y ago
How do they handle spam?
- p4bl0 6y ago
  IIRC they only show emails from your contacts or emails that are replies to Delta Chat messages.
- adbenitez 6y ago
  there is no spam, until spammers start using Delta Chat :D then you can block contacts and groups
throwaway8822 6y ago
The fact that Delta Chat is catching on is a sad reflection on the state of the IM tools and protocols. Compare to most IM systems Delta Chat is: - easier to set up: you already have an email - equally private: most IM systems leak metadata anyways. A global observer can infer your peers. - compared to Signal, it does not snoop your phone number - decentralized - cheaper to run 1: managing mailservers is cheaper than managing both mailservers and IM servers - cheaper to run 2: mailservers evolved for decades and are now pretty efficient, especially compared to most IM servers
- dheera 6y ago
  I got banned by WeChat last week for a while for using "unauthorized plugins". They seem to also be adamant about not allowing people to run WeChat on virtual machines. Seriously, WTF? It's none of your business what device I use and whether it's virtual or not. I got a cease-and-desist from Facebook many years ago for trying to write a Perl interface to their messenger. I own and control my devices, damnit. I hate these walled garden messaging apps that seem to actively thwart innovation. All I want is a protocol (which I'm even happy to pay for!) and I will decide how messages present themselves on my end. Many years ago I used Pidgin to interface to MSN, ICQ, AIM, QQ, Gtalk, Yahoo, Zephyr, and a couple others. It was great -- I had E2E encryption (sorry Pichai and Whatsapp I had E2E encryption on ALL of my messengers before you all decided to wall-garden your apps and then do some stupid PR stunt about E2E encryption years later), automatic human language translation, automatic LaTeX rendering, and a bunch of other features, all of which I don't have now because the messenger apps everyone uses now are anti-innovation. We've taken a huge step backward.
  - da_big_ghey 6y ago
    I got a discord account banned recently, and they wouldn't tell me why. My guess is that it has to do with my using a weechat bridge rather than their garbage client. I have to do the same for slack and for signal (which, by the way, is terrible even with signald), because they too have garbage clients. I have a much better experience when just using plain IRC.
hkt 6y ago
I've been using this with one single solitary friend for about a year. It works really well and we both love it. What has bothered potential adoptees is the idea it needs their email account credentials. People who don't think it is super cool already don't seem willing to adopt it. It would be nice if that changed.
- progre 6y ago
  Well, the account credentials would stay in the local client wouldn't they? There is no hosted web version of this (yet!) and no central server so there is no one to leak credentials to. The only receiver of the credentials would be your email provider, and you are already sending them that in your normal email client.
  - hkt 6y ago
    Their fear was that the app was malware. It was surprisingly difficult to dispel the idea
    - progre 6y ago
      It's a legitimate fear I think. The only fix I can see is to establish a trustworthy brand which can be hard for a relatively unknown entity.
  - nobodywasishere 6y ago
    The other option could be an app-password with gmail
- p4bl0 6y ago
  In the worst case you can still create a specific email account for deltachat.
CodeGlitch 6y ago
This is really interesting. I was talking about using email instead of WhatsApp/Signal last week when the whole WhatsApp privacy situation exploded. It's a shame this wasn't more visible last week when there was a big uptake of signal (or was it?).
- jitans 6y ago
  Do you realize WhatsApp privacy hasn't changed?
  - CodeGlitch 6y ago
    Yes they delayed it due to the backlash. The plan is to still go ahead with it.
eevilspock 6y ago
I’ve had an idea like the is for a long time but for a distributed social network.
vascocosta 6y ago
This highlights the fact that there are too many protocols that are essentially reinventing the wheel. The problem isn't necessarily too many clients, but too many transport agents. In a way, they're almost all reincarnations of what email, IRC or XMPP could already do, with a few makeup changes, often designed to lock-in the user and consequently fragment the user base. What we need is perhaps more clients, with different interfaces but using the proven underlying protocols and implementing new features client side. Delta Chat, making use of email, does this, with the added bonus of SMTP's natural decentralisation and openness.
- smt88 6y ago
  Email is a wheel that needs reinventing. It's fundamentally difficult/impossible to secure.
  - ognarb 6y ago
    Maybe we need email over the matrix protocol. Decentralized and using an already existing modern open protocol. The problem is that email has too much inertia.
    - Jarwain 6y ago
      Well there's the Matrix Email Bridge: https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/matrix-email-bridge https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/matrix-email-bridge
  - Triv888 6y ago
    The data of emails is very easy to secure, but the metadata is another story... for example, your email could consist of a single gpg file.
  - buster 6y ago
    Why do you think that? What would yet another protocol nobody uses bring to the table, smtp and imap don't? It's reliable, stable, decentralized and can be used securely.
tommoor 6y ago
Like a lot of open source projects this is a great idea with a lot of potential that's somewhat let down by poor design and UX, we really need more professional designers contributing to open source! eg: How do you start a new chat – the primary function of this app? It's hidden in the "..." menu that looks like it contains the settings for the existing example chat.
- adbenitez 6y ago
  in android you can start a chat just pressing in the + button, and in desktop, just typing the email address in the search bar should show a button to start a chat with that contact
  - tommoor 6y ago
    Yep, this was just one example of many :)
eevilspock 6y ago
what’s not clear from the FAQ is whether it turns ALL your email into chat messages or only a subset, e.g. all email with a special header or tag in the subject. I’m assuming it piggybacks on your normal email address as opposed to making you create a dedicated one for chat.
- buster 6y ago
  It's just an email client, acting on the delta chat emails (and moving them to a delta.chat IMAP folder). It works transparently with a fallback that the receiver can still just reply in a normal email client. It's how the whole messaging drama. Should be resolved and it's using decentralized infrastructure that is already there and reliable.
- hpk42 6y ago
  The default mode of Delta Chats "email interaction" setting is "show only chat messages". This includes replies to messages you sent out from Delta Chat, even if the reply came from another email app or a webmail interface. So you can chat with anyone who you know the email address from. If you set email interaction to "all" then you see regular email appearing as a "contact request" if you haven't already accepted the sender. In current development repos there is already support for mailing lists, and for html-mail. With this and a few other improvements, delta chat can be used as an e-mail client in more situations.
  - eevilspock 6y ago
    So it uses the reply chain as identified in the email header. It might be useful to actually define a new email header field (Or define a new value to put into an existing field), thereby making this an open protocol.
    - hpk42 6y ago
      All Delta Chat messages have the "Chat-Version" header. For more specifications see https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core-rust/blob/master/spec.md#outgoing-messages https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core-rust/blob/master...
flas9sd 6y ago
I'm using it for 1-on-1 chats in my family and the application makes you forget that it's smtp/imap/pgp underneath. It feels like a WA clone. Will it disclose past message contents on private key leak? yes. If you fetch mails via pop3 be aware, you'll move them away before DeltaChat can move them into its own folder via IMAP to build its message threads. If you're doing IMAP only you'll see the messages with your mailclient unless moved. Maybe consider using a dedicated email-alias or account. If the receiving SMTP on submission doesn't strip your connecting IP Address in the Received headers this is quiet a lot on the wire that DC can't do anything about and where you would rely on transport encryption. It made a point what a thoughtful chat-view, pgp-using email client can do, so I still recommend to give it a try.
- adbenitez 6y ago
  I hear rumors that they might add forward secrecy in the future, it is not impossible to implement that over email
- gsich 6y ago
  You can leave the mails on the server with POP3, so it should still be movable.
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  How's the latency? I guess it depends on your provider, but with email it can be pretty long for an instant messenger.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    I have only tested gmail to gmail and it was fairly quick. Under a second in my experience. Providers will differ but email is usually very fast these days.
adbenitez 6y ago
I have created some bots (mainly for Spanish speakers, Delta Chat ia used a lot in Cuba), bots to bridge with Mastodon so you can chat in private with users there or toot etc., bots to play games with friends etc. even to get xkcd comics etc https://writefreely.public.cat/delta-news/bots-publicos https://writefreely.public.cat/delta-news/bots-publicos
ourcat 6y ago
About six years ago, I built a similar app for an old long-distance (many timezones away) girlfriend and I to send voice messages to eachother. (called 'duovox' - not released to public). It created recordings and other metadata/attachments and simply zipped them up with a password and custom file extension and sent via email. The app was naturally registered with the custom file extension, so that clicking the email attachment in the Mail app would simply open the app and the message it contained. Very simple. Very effective. And using an existing and secure (one would hope!) transport: email.
- rakoo 6y ago
  That's very nice, I'm sure people would be interested in your app ! > secure (one would hope!) transport: email. The best strategy is to assume it is not (because it is not) and implement security at the end, like you did, because you have a specific usage that may not be generalized. End-to-end principle.
nosmokewhereiam 6y ago
Before echo chat
ksec 6y ago
Is Fast IMAP fast enough for Chat? I think most IM currently does sub 50ms response time excluding Network Latency.
- buster 6y ago
  It's not instant, of course it relies on the smtp servers in between, but for a Gmail to Gmail test it was nearly instant, for my own mail relay to Gmail it was probably 10 seconds delay which is fine for me.
dmje 6y ago
Really incredibly, irritatingly simple and well executed idea...
- jitans 6y ago
  So basically what we needed was a different email client?
  - dmje 6y ago
    That sort of misses the point, for a general non-technical user anyway..
polishdude20 6y ago
So when chatting with a friend without the app, each message has a big ad for the app. Is there a way to turn this off?
- shock 6y ago
  Yes, in Settings if you click on the user profile info, you can set the signature text.
brightball 6y ago
Love this concept. I’d really love to see this taken to the next level to create an email powered social network. You’d really just need a client that could parse the data.
- vidarh 6y ago
  I've kept pointing out for years that e-mail can be used for this. You can decompose e.g. even something like Twitter into mail servers + forwarding + mailing-lists. Back in 2001 I was part of using Qmail as a distributed message broker. We built a domain name registry with live updates where messages between backend components were sent as e-mails. It worked very well, and you get the ability to federate for free.
majortennis 6y ago
im already trying to get people to join signal and only half succeeding, can't swap aagain right noww
- jitans 6y ago
  Just because this is the new trend (for no reason) ?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ampdepolymerase 6y ago
All they need is to rebrand it as an enterprise SaaS and boom, unicorn. (For those who don't get the joke, see Front: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25272533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25272533)
rpcwork 6y ago
Great endeavor! Trying to think how One would make the “...” (jill is typing) for Delta Chat considerig that it is all happening over SMTP.
cbradford 6y ago
Looks like a very cool project. Slightly off topic question, is there a reason the email providers like FastMail or Protonmail don't just include XMPP as part of their bundle?
- foxhop 6y ago
  That's a great question, I'd get a Protonmail account it I could use it to XMPP
  - happyjack 6y ago
    mailbox.org has an xmpp server. I use to chat to my colleagues and girlfriend.
    - cbradford 6y ago
      Very cool!
    - cbradford 6y ago
      Looks like FastMail had this until 2015 https://fastmail.blog/2015/11/16/shutting-down-our-xmpp-chat-service/ https://fastmail.blog/2015/11/16/shutting-down-our-xmpp-chat...
phil294 6y ago
Another IMO slightly more promising alternative is COI, the Chat Over IMAP protocol. It aims to extend IMAP servers while staying compatible with normal ones. https://github.com/coi-dev/ox-coi https://github.com/coi-dev/ox-coi Unfortunately, the development is on hold (?). I really like how they seem to plan on integrating normal email client functionality into it, something Delta Chat is also missing. I have tried both and would not recommend either to non-technical users at all, but I think that is not the primary audience yet anyway. The IM landscape is indeed in a bad shape currently. I hope Matrix will take the lead eventually. But not even Signal will help in that regard https://community.signalusers.org/t/make-signal-use-matrix-protocol/23282 https://community.signalusers.org/t/make-signal-use-matrix-p...
- shakna 6y ago
  > It aims to extend IMAP servers while staying compatible with normal ones... I really like how they seem to plan on integrating normal email client functionality into it, something Delta Chat is also missing. I don't see anywhere in DeltaChat's spec [0] anywhere it breaks compatibility with normal IMAP. So long as your email client can use autocrypt standard (plugins exist for Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.), then you can make use of DeltaChat emails as normal emails. [0] https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core-rust/blob/master/spec.md https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core-rust/blob/master...
  - phil294 6y ago
    Yes you can use DeltaChat for "normal" emails as well, but I was referring to the usability of it. I do not think many would ever ditch, say, Gmail in favor of Delta, as long as conventional emails are prevailing. The main problem here is that an email thread is not necessarily limited to a fixed group of people. With every answer, the audience might change, with different ways to address recipients (direct, CC, BCC; Merging different threads via FWD, manually editing quoted messages). It's hard to apply these principles to group chats, which is why Delta Chat simply doesn't.
    - shakna 6y ago
mac01021 6y ago
I tried this out last week, hoping it would be good enough for me to cancel my plan of setting up a matrix server. It's a nice idea, but I likely will not continue using it or try to sell anyone I know on using it because it doesn't let me share conversations between my different devices (like my smartphone and my laptop). If someone replies to a chat I send from my phone, I want to see the reply (and the whole thread, really) on every device I have Delta Chat installed on. So, matrix it is, I guess.
- nobodywasishere 6y ago
  This is completely possible. I have this setup on my phone and laptop currently. https://delta.chat/en/help#can-i-use-delta-chat-on-multiple-devices-at-the-same-time https://delta.chat/en/help#can-i-use-delta-chat-on-multiple-...
  - nobodywasishere 6y ago
    Make sure to turn on self-sending messages in the settings for each client as well
annadane 6y ago
I've tried linking delta.chat on Facebook. It won't let you. I would love to give the people who thought that was a good idea a stern talking to
- kevincox 6y ago
  One of the reasons that I moved away from Facebook Messenger is that it was censoring my links. Incredibly frustrating.
sohamsankaran 6y ago
This is great! If you're not a Delta Chat user and someone tries to message you, can you receive and respond to it as an email?
- nichos 6y ago
  Yes: https://delta.chat/en/help#how-can-i-find-people-to-chat-with https://delta.chat/en/help#how-can-i-find-people-to-chat-wit...
paradite 6y ago
Why not just use an email client with support for conversation threads?
- nichos 6y ago
  DeltaChat is encrypted by default. Getting a nontechnical person to encrypt email is pretty difficult.
ComodoHacker 6y ago
>Delta Chat is like Telegram or Whatsapp but without the tracking or central control. >Delta Chat doesn’t have their own servers but uses the most massive and diverse open messaging system ever: the existing e-mail server network. Doesn't that mean Google effectively owns it, with central control, tracking and other "benefits"?
eluusive 6y ago
Not sure why they wouldn't use XMPP for this? Also, there's another app being worked on called Stamp is a similar messaging system as well, but uses an HTTP based transport instead of SMTP. The things that set Stamp apart is that is has: * Spam mitigation in the base layer so relay operators don't need to deal with it * An indirect address lookup system so you don't get tied to one Stamp provider. * No attachment to PII to start accounts. (No phone number or email required) Check out the whitepaper, it's not very long: https://www.getstamp.io/whitepaper.pdf https://www.getstamp.io/whitepaper.pdf
- petra 6y ago
  Since stamp is fee based, what's the cost per user per month ? Is that price stable ? And it would be good to include such information in the site, because crypto has already got a scammy smell, in general.
  - eluusive 6y ago
    It depends on the host you use. Right now it's basically free. Anyone can run a relay server and set their prices.
    - petra 6y ago
      //Anyone can run a relay server and set their prices. Will this always be the case? And if I'm only talking to my friends via IM, why would I need spam protection? Or in other words , could I just use a free server? Because there's a huge difference between free and paid.
      - eluusive 6y ago
        Why would your friends require you to pay them? You set your own fees. What’s your attention worth?
- sneak 6y ago
  Approximately no one on the internet has an XMPP account. Approximately everyone on the internet has an email address.
sub7 6y ago
Big problem here is using existing email address with other sensitive data in the inbox. Need to tie up with an email provider and give people an email address on signup. Also needs intelligent grouping of said email with someone's gmail on both the invite/invitee side.
Rygian 6y ago
On startup, the Android app asked for my email credentials. There's no way I'm going to trust anyone aside from the mail provider with those credentials.
- episode0x01 6y ago
  Use another address for this? I think the idea is to leverage email as opposed to depending on a central provider. Doesn't mean you have to use your main email address for it to function.
- jdc 6y ago
  Furthermore, this won't be a problem for Fastmail and Gmail accounts because they offer app passwords.
john4532452 6y ago
Email is the only practical hope to having a federated communication over internet. Unfortunately gmail and outlook has disproportionate share of email communication which is a threat to the open standards. It is possible to built a federated communication but it has to be built from scratch which is very hard.

220 points by buster 6y ago

I like it. Some of the best ideas are the simple ones.

I recently blogged about it [1] and think Delta Chat is the messenger we should migrate to. Email is decentralized (at least when not everybody is using Gmail) and isn't a silo like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and Threema. Because what happens when Signal goes bad? Everyone has to move again... [1]: https://jlelse.blog/posts/email-messenger-delta-chat https://jlelse.blog/posts/email-messenger-delta-chat

dheera 6y ago
I also don't like that Signal relies on phone numbers or a QR code from a phone to log in. Phone numbers are traceable to identities. They really should have used usernames or e-mail addresses. Also, Signal's desktop app shouldn't require a stupid phone app to enable it. I have a big powerful setup on my desk and you're asking me to go around my house looking for a silly 6" device to give it permission to log in? That's backwards. It should be the other way around if anything.
- jitans 6y ago
  And leaking a mail (with real names) is much better?
  - dheera 6y ago
    E-mail doesn't have to have real names, isn't regulated by the government, and the same ID can be used across the world.
  - SahAssar 6y ago
    Yes. Phone numbers are linked to a physical device (a SIM card or similar) or a contract (with a provider). An email does not need to contain a real name, and I'd say it's much easier for me to get a email with a temporary identity than it is to get a phone number for the same.
    - dheera 6y ago
      Not only that, but many countries have regulation that requires providing some form of government ID to obtain a phone number, even a virtual one.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    It takes 5 minutes to set up a new email account just for this app if you want to do so...
  - gsich 6y ago
    Yes, because you can choose if you want your name in your address.
beagle3 6y ago
My only gripe with delta chat is that the metadata most email stores keep per email message is measured in kilobytes (sometimes tens of them). View-source is very enlightening. For email messages which are often 1K-200K themselves with attachments, and somtimes > 10MB, I guess it's acceptable. For one line "How about lunch today?" messages, it just hurts my engineer bones to use Delta-Chat on a regular email server.
- jlelse 6y ago
  They are working on it https://delta.chat/en/2020-03-11-reduced-message-size https://delta.chat/en/2020-03-11-reduced-message-size
- buster 6y ago
  Yes, i'd guess a simple message might start at around 1kB and in a chat application you probably never exceed 2kB. Considering the massive amount of data i can store on even the cheapest smart phone, the available bandwidth even under bad conditions, i'd say, that's a totally acceptable size. It could be less for sure, but it's not bad. And it's plain text, so storage is not even a problem, it's easily compressed! Now, don't let me compare 1kB data download to visiting a website and all the crapload i download for the simplest webpage nowadays...
  - beagle3 6y ago
    I agree, in the grand scheme of everything internet/web, it’s not even a rounding error. And yet, the 2000% overhead is viscerally bothering me. I’m not even saying “there must be a better way” - it is quite possible that there isn’t given the politics involved and the incumbents. Delta is usable, today, with everyone; no need for buy in from your addressees. But, it still hurts.
    - buster 6y ago
      Yep. Actually, i've used it now with some friends and it works very well. Part of them is only using email, 2 are using the apps. Two quirks: 1. Of course your mail provider needs to have IMAP enabled (some corporate outlook/exchange installations do not). 2. It could be a problem if you mail provider has a limit on maximum mails per day. I've not experienced that problem, but still..
6ak74rfy 6y ago
> think Delta Chat is the messenger we should migrate to. Not really. WhatsApp and Signal allow you to place audio and video calls, Delta Chat (by design) can't. And that's critical for folks who have families and friends in other countries.
- jlelse 6y ago
  It has a feature for video calls.

progre 6y ago

End to end encrypted? https://delta.chat/en/help#does-delta-chat-support-end-to-end-encryption https://delta.chat/en/help#does-delta-chat-support-end-to-en... Yes, if receiver uses IMAP if I understand this correctly. Edit: End-to-end encryption or not is maybe unrelated to IMAP use. E2E Encryption does not work with some email providers though.

zigzaggy 6y ago
Does that mean the iOS app isn’t encrypted? (Guess I could just go check the source code instead of being lazy)
- progre 6y ago
  Uh, I don't think IMAP is generally blocked on iOS? Anyway, end-to-end encryption seems to depend on the email provider being able to support IMAP. So Hey.com is out but gmail can work if you enable IMAP support for example. Here is a list of tested providers: https://providers.delta.chat/ https://providers.delta.chat/
  - tuuxi 6y ago
    IMAP is not blocked by iOS. Also, end-to-end-encryption is not related directly to IMAP. The issue with Hey/Protonmail/Tutanota is that they do not offer IMAP- or other standard-protocol-support - so you can just not log in with Delta Chat (nor with any other e-mail-client) to your Hey/Protonmail/Tutanota account. If you log in to deltachat say with Posteo, you can write to other Hey/Protonmail/Tutanota accounts - but as the recipient cannot use Delta or other Autocrypt capable clients (Enigmail, K9), things cannot be encrypted. If Hey/Protonmail/Tutanota would support Autocrypt in their webclients, of course, this can change.
h_anna_h 6y ago
It does not say anything about IMAP there. It just says that it is in fact end to end encrypted.
- 6y ago

tdrgabi 6y ago

How do they handle spam?

p4bl0 6y ago
IIRC they only show emails from your contacts or emails that are replies to Delta Chat messages.
adbenitez 6y ago
there is no spam, until spammers start using Delta Chat :D then you can block contacts and groups

throwaway8822 6y ago

The fact that Delta Chat is catching on is a sad reflection on the state of the IM tools and protocols. Compare to most IM systems Delta Chat is: - easier to set up: you already have an email - equally private: most IM systems leak metadata anyways. A global observer can infer your peers. - compared to Signal, it does not snoop your phone number - decentralized - cheaper to run 1: managing mailservers is cheaper than managing both mailservers and IM servers - cheaper to run 2: mailservers evolved for decades and are now pretty efficient, especially compared to most IM servers

dheera 6y ago
I got banned by WeChat last week for a while for using "unauthorized plugins". They seem to also be adamant about not allowing people to run WeChat on virtual machines. Seriously, WTF? It's none of your business what device I use and whether it's virtual or not. I got a cease-and-desist from Facebook many years ago for trying to write a Perl interface to their messenger. I own and control my devices, damnit. I hate these walled garden messaging apps that seem to actively thwart innovation. All I want is a protocol (which I'm even happy to pay for!) and I will decide how messages present themselves on my end. Many years ago I used Pidgin to interface to MSN, ICQ, AIM, QQ, Gtalk, Yahoo, Zephyr, and a couple others. It was great -- I had E2E encryption (sorry Pichai and Whatsapp I had E2E encryption on ALL of my messengers before you all decided to wall-garden your apps and then do some stupid PR stunt about E2E encryption years later), automatic human language translation, automatic LaTeX rendering, and a bunch of other features, all of which I don't have now because the messenger apps everyone uses now are anti-innovation. We've taken a huge step backward.
- da_big_ghey 6y ago
  I got a discord account banned recently, and they wouldn't tell me why. My guess is that it has to do with my using a weechat bridge rather than their garbage client. I have to do the same for slack and for signal (which, by the way, is terrible even with signald), because they too have garbage clients. I have a much better experience when just using plain IRC.

hkt 6y ago

I've been using this with one single solitary friend for about a year. It works really well and we both love it. What has bothered potential adoptees is the idea it needs their email account credentials. People who don't think it is super cool already don't seem willing to adopt it. It would be nice if that changed.

progre 6y ago
Well, the account credentials would stay in the local client wouldn't they? There is no hosted web version of this (yet!) and no central server so there is no one to leak credentials to. The only receiver of the credentials would be your email provider, and you are already sending them that in your normal email client.
- hkt 6y ago
  Their fear was that the app was malware. It was surprisingly difficult to dispel the idea
  - progre 6y ago
    It's a legitimate fear I think. The only fix I can see is to establish a trustworthy brand which can be hard for a relatively unknown entity.
- nobodywasishere 6y ago
  The other option could be an app-password with gmail
p4bl0 6y ago
In the worst case you can still create a specific email account for deltachat.

CodeGlitch 6y ago

This is really interesting. I was talking about using email instead of WhatsApp/Signal last week when the whole WhatsApp privacy situation exploded. It's a shame this wasn't more visible last week when there was a big uptake of signal (or was it?).

jitans 6y ago
Do you realize WhatsApp privacy hasn't changed?
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  Yes they delayed it due to the backlash. The plan is to still go ahead with it.

eevilspock 6y ago

I’ve had an idea like the is for a long time but for a distributed social network.

vascocosta 6y ago

This highlights the fact that there are too many protocols that are essentially reinventing the wheel. The problem isn't necessarily too many clients, but too many transport agents. In a way, they're almost all reincarnations of what email, IRC or XMPP could already do, with a few makeup changes, often designed to lock-in the user and consequently fragment the user base. What we need is perhaps more clients, with different interfaces but using the proven underlying protocols and implementing new features client side. Delta Chat, making use of email, does this, with the added bonus of SMTP's natural decentralisation and openness.

smt88 6y ago
Email is a wheel that needs reinventing. It's fundamentally difficult/impossible to secure.
- ognarb 6y ago
  Maybe we need email over the matrix protocol. Decentralized and using an already existing modern open protocol. The problem is that email has too much inertia.
  - Jarwain 6y ago
    Well there's the Matrix Email Bridge: https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/matrix-email-bridge https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/matrix-email-bridge
- Triv888 6y ago
  The data of emails is very easy to secure, but the metadata is another story... for example, your email could consist of a single gpg file.
- buster 6y ago
  Why do you think that? What would yet another protocol nobody uses bring to the table, smtp and imap don't? It's reliable, stable, decentralized and can be used securely.

tommoor 6y ago

Like a lot of open source projects this is a great idea with a lot of potential that's somewhat let down by poor design and UX, we really need more professional designers contributing to open source! eg: How do you start a new chat – the primary function of this app? It's hidden in the "..." menu that looks like it contains the settings for the existing example chat.

adbenitez 6y ago
in android you can start a chat just pressing in the + button, and in desktop, just typing the email address in the search bar should show a button to start a chat with that contact
- tommoor 6y ago
  Yep, this was just one example of many :)

eevilspock 6y ago

what’s not clear from the FAQ is whether it turns ALL your email into chat messages or only a subset, e.g. all email with a special header or tag in the subject. I’m assuming it piggybacks on your normal email address as opposed to making you create a dedicated one for chat.

buster 6y ago
It's just an email client, acting on the delta chat emails (and moving them to a delta.chat IMAP folder). It works transparently with a fallback that the receiver can still just reply in a normal email client. It's how the whole messaging drama. Should be resolved and it's using decentralized infrastructure that is already there and reliable.
hpk42 6y ago
The default mode of Delta Chats "email interaction" setting is "show only chat messages". This includes replies to messages you sent out from Delta Chat, even if the reply came from another email app or a webmail interface. So you can chat with anyone who you know the email address from. If you set email interaction to "all" then you see regular email appearing as a "contact request" if you haven't already accepted the sender. In current development repos there is already support for mailing lists, and for html-mail. With this and a few other improvements, delta chat can be used as an e-mail client in more situations.
- eevilspock 6y ago
  So it uses the reply chain as identified in the email header. It might be useful to actually define a new email header field (Or define a new value to put into an existing field), thereby making this an open protocol.
  - hpk42 6y ago
    All Delta Chat messages have the "Chat-Version" header. For more specifications see https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core-rust/blob/master/spec.md#outgoing-messages https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core-rust/blob/master...

flas9sd 6y ago

I'm using it for 1-on-1 chats in my family and the application makes you forget that it's smtp/imap/pgp underneath. It feels like a WA clone. Will it disclose past message contents on private key leak? yes. If you fetch mails via pop3 be aware, you'll move them away before DeltaChat can move them into its own folder via IMAP to build its message threads. If you're doing IMAP only you'll see the messages with your mailclient unless moved. Maybe consider using a dedicated email-alias or account. If the receiving SMTP on submission doesn't strip your connecting IP Address in the Received headers this is quiet a lot on the wire that DC can't do anything about and where you would rely on transport encryption. It made a point what a thoughtful chat-view, pgp-using email client can do, so I still recommend to give it a try.

adbenitez 6y ago
I hear rumors that they might add forward secrecy in the future, it is not impossible to implement that over email
gsich 6y ago
You can leave the mails on the server with POP3, so it should still be movable.
benhurmarcel 6y ago
How's the latency? I guess it depends on your provider, but with email it can be pretty long for an instant messenger.
- kevincox 6y ago
  I have only tested gmail to gmail and it was fairly quick. Under a second in my experience. Providers will differ but email is usually very fast these days.

adbenitez 6y ago

I have created some bots (mainly for Spanish speakers, Delta Chat ia used a lot in Cuba), bots to bridge with Mastodon so you can chat in private with users there or toot etc., bots to play games with friends etc. even to get xkcd comics etc https://writefreely.public.cat/delta-news/bots-publicos https://writefreely.public.cat/delta-news/bots-publicos

ourcat 6y ago

About six years ago, I built a similar app for an old long-distance (many timezones away) girlfriend and I to send voice messages to eachother. (called 'duovox' - not released to public). It created recordings and other metadata/attachments and simply zipped them up with a password and custom file extension and sent via email. The app was naturally registered with the custom file extension, so that clicking the email attachment in the Mail app would simply open the app and the message it contained. Very simple. Very effective. And using an existing and secure (one would hope!) transport: email.

rakoo 6y ago
That's very nice, I'm sure people would be interested in your app ! > secure (one would hope!) transport: email. The best strategy is to assume it is not (because it is not) and implement security at the end, like you did, because you have a specific usage that may not be generalized. End-to-end principle.

nosmokewhereiam 6y ago

Before echo chat

ksec 6y ago

Is Fast IMAP fast enough for Chat? I think most IM currently does sub 50ms response time excluding Network Latency.

buster 6y ago
It's not instant, of course it relies on the smtp servers in between, but for a Gmail to Gmail test it was nearly instant, for my own mail relay to Gmail it was probably 10 seconds delay which is fine for me.

dmje 6y ago

Really incredibly, irritatingly simple and well executed idea...

jitans 6y ago
So basically what we needed was a different email client?
- dmje 6y ago
  That sort of misses the point, for a general non-technical user anyway..

polishdude20 6y ago

So when chatting with a friend without the app, each message has a big ad for the app. Is there a way to turn this off?

shock 6y ago
Yes, in Settings if you click on the user profile info, you can set the signature text.

brightball 6y ago

Love this concept. I’d really love to see this taken to the next level to create an email powered social network. You’d really just need a client that could parse the data.

vidarh 6y ago
I've kept pointing out for years that e-mail can be used for this. You can decompose e.g. even something like Twitter into mail servers + forwarding + mailing-lists. Back in 2001 I was part of using Qmail as a distributed message broker. We built a domain name registry with live updates where messages between backend components were sent as e-mails. It worked very well, and you get the ability to federate for free.

majortennis 6y ago

im already trying to get people to join signal and only half succeeding, can't swap aagain right noww

jitans 6y ago
Just because this is the new trend (for no reason) ?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ampdepolymerase 6y ago

All they need is to rebrand it as an enterprise SaaS and boom, unicorn. (For those who don't get the joke, see Front: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25272533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25272533)

rpcwork 6y ago

Great endeavor! Trying to think how One would make the “...” (jill is typing) for Delta Chat considerig that it is all happening over SMTP.

cbradford 6y ago

Looks like a very cool project. Slightly off topic question, is there a reason the email providers like FastMail or Protonmail don't just include XMPP as part of their bundle?

foxhop 6y ago
That's a great question, I'd get a Protonmail account it I could use it to XMPP
- happyjack 6y ago
  mailbox.org has an xmpp server. I use to chat to my colleagues and girlfriend.
  - cbradford 6y ago
    Very cool!
  - cbradford 6y ago
    Looks like FastMail had this until 2015 https://fastmail.blog/2015/11/16/shutting-down-our-xmpp-chat-service/ https://fastmail.blog/2015/11/16/shutting-down-our-xmpp-chat...

phil294 6y ago

Another IMO slightly more promising alternative is COI, the Chat Over IMAP protocol. It aims to extend IMAP servers while staying compatible with normal ones. https://github.com/coi-dev/ox-coi https://github.com/coi-dev/ox-coi Unfortunately, the development is on hold (?). I really like how they seem to plan on integrating normal email client functionality into it, something Delta Chat is also missing. I have tried both and would not recommend either to non-technical users at all, but I think that is not the primary audience yet anyway. The IM landscape is indeed in a bad shape currently. I hope Matrix will take the lead eventually. But not even Signal will help in that regard https://community.signalusers.org/t/make-signal-use-matrix-protocol/23282 https://community.signalusers.org/t/make-signal-use-matrix-p...

shakna 6y ago
> It aims to extend IMAP servers while staying compatible with normal ones... I really like how they seem to plan on integrating normal email client functionality into it, something Delta Chat is also missing. I don't see anywhere in DeltaChat's spec [0] anywhere it breaks compatibility with normal IMAP. So long as your email client can use autocrypt standard (plugins exist for Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.), then you can make use of DeltaChat emails as normal emails. [0] https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core-rust/blob/master/spec.md https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core-rust/blob/master...
- phil294 6y ago
  Yes you can use DeltaChat for "normal" emails as well, but I was referring to the usability of it. I do not think many would ever ditch, say, Gmail in favor of Delta, as long as conventional emails are prevailing. The main problem here is that an email thread is not necessarily limited to a fixed group of people. With every answer, the audience might change, with different ways to address recipients (direct, CC, BCC; Merging different threads via FWD, manually editing quoted messages). It's hard to apply these principles to group chats, which is why Delta Chat simply doesn't.
  - shakna 6y ago

mac01021 6y ago

I tried this out last week, hoping it would be good enough for me to cancel my plan of setting up a matrix server. It's a nice idea, but I likely will not continue using it or try to sell anyone I know on using it because it doesn't let me share conversations between my different devices (like my smartphone and my laptop). If someone replies to a chat I send from my phone, I want to see the reply (and the whole thread, really) on every device I have Delta Chat installed on. So, matrix it is, I guess.

nobodywasishere 6y ago
This is completely possible. I have this setup on my phone and laptop currently. https://delta.chat/en/help#can-i-use-delta-chat-on-multiple-devices-at-the-same-time https://delta.chat/en/help#can-i-use-delta-chat-on-multiple-...
- nobodywasishere 6y ago
  Make sure to turn on self-sending messages in the settings for each client as well

annadane 6y ago

I've tried linking delta.chat on Facebook. It won't let you. I would love to give the people who thought that was a good idea a stern talking to

kevincox 6y ago
One of the reasons that I moved away from Facebook Messenger is that it was censoring my links. Incredibly frustrating.

sohamsankaran 6y ago

This is great! If you're not a Delta Chat user and someone tries to message you, can you receive and respond to it as an email?

nichos 6y ago
Yes: https://delta.chat/en/help#how-can-i-find-people-to-chat-with https://delta.chat/en/help#how-can-i-find-people-to-chat-wit...

paradite 6y ago

Why not just use an email client with support for conversation threads?

nichos 6y ago
DeltaChat is encrypted by default. Getting a nontechnical person to encrypt email is pretty difficult.

ComodoHacker 6y ago

>Delta Chat is like Telegram or Whatsapp but without the tracking or central control. >Delta Chat doesn’t have their own servers but uses the most massive and diverse open messaging system ever: the existing e-mail server network. Doesn't that mean Google effectively owns it, with central control, tracking and other "benefits"?

eluusive 6y ago

Not sure why they wouldn't use XMPP for this? Also, there's another app being worked on called Stamp is a similar messaging system as well, but uses an HTTP based transport instead of SMTP. The things that set Stamp apart is that is has: * Spam mitigation in the base layer so relay operators don't need to deal with it * An indirect address lookup system so you don't get tied to one Stamp provider. * No attachment to PII to start accounts. (No phone number or email required) Check out the whitepaper, it's not very long: https://www.getstamp.io/whitepaper.pdf https://www.getstamp.io/whitepaper.pdf

petra 6y ago
Since stamp is fee based, what's the cost per user per month ? Is that price stable ? And it would be good to include such information in the site, because crypto has already got a scammy smell, in general.
- eluusive 6y ago
  It depends on the host you use. Right now it's basically free. Anyone can run a relay server and set their prices.
  - petra 6y ago
    //Anyone can run a relay server and set their prices. Will this always be the case? And if I'm only talking to my friends via IM, why would I need spam protection? Or in other words , could I just use a free server? Because there's a huge difference between free and paid.
    - eluusive 6y ago
      Why would your friends require you to pay them? You set your own fees. What’s your attention worth?
sneak 6y ago
Approximately no one on the internet has an XMPP account. Approximately everyone on the internet has an email address.

sub7 6y ago

Big problem here is using existing email address with other sensitive data in the inbox. Need to tie up with an email provider and give people an email address on signup. Also needs intelligent grouping of said email with someone's gmail on both the invite/invitee side.

Rygian 6y ago

On startup, the Android app asked for my email credentials. There's no way I'm going to trust anyone aside from the mail provider with those credentials.

episode0x01 6y ago
Use another address for this? I think the idea is to leverage email as opposed to depending on a central provider. Doesn't mean you have to use your main email address for it to function.
jdc 6y ago
Furthermore, this won't be a problem for Fastmail and Gmail accounts because they offer app passwords.

john4532452 6y ago

Email is the only practical hope to having a federated communication over internet. Unfortunately gmail and outlook has disproportionate share of email communication which is a threat to the open standards. It is possible to built a federated communication but it has to be built from scratch which is very hard.