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Note that while it might be decentralized and "secure", it is not anonymizing as IMAP + SMTP are far from anonymous. Email is a legacy system that was never des

Note that while it might be decentralized and "secure", it is not anonymizing as IMAP + SMTP are far from anonymous. Email is a legacy system that was never designed with privacy or anonymity in mind. This is useful if you want to keep the content of your messages secure, but if you need to keep your identity, social graph and the fact that you conversed with certain people obfuscated, I don't think Delta Chat via email is a good solution. It's also only decentralized as much as public email infrastructure is decentralized.

School-Cotton 1y ago
> It's also only decentralized as much as public email infrastructure is decentralized. So… entirely? What am I missing about your point?
- binary132 1y ago
  Public email infrastructure is almost entirely dominated by Google. This is worth looking into if you’re not familiar with the state of affairs
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  I run my own email servers, but 99% of mail goes over Google/Microsoft/AWS/etc email servers anyway. In practice, it's quite centralized and you're always at risk of one of the big providers locking your servers out of their network or putting you on a blocklist they all use.
singpolyma3 1y ago
It is not possible to hide the fact that you conversed with a certain person from your service provider. That's part of why being able to choose a service provider is so important.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  Theoretically, Cwtch[1] would afford you this obfuscation assuming Tor is secure and your adversary isn't nation-state level. Similarly, using SimpleX private message routing via .onion message relays and the fact that the system has no identifiers can also afford you that obfuscation. [1] https://docs.cwtch.im/ https://docs.cwtch.im/
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    Differences between Cwtch, and SimpleX? Which are you leaning towards to and why? According to https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplexmq/blob/stable/protocol/overview-tjr.md https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplexmq/blob/stable/protoc...: > identify that and when a user is using SimpleX. Does this apply to Cwtch? Also, is it not possible to obfsucate this traffic? Tor with obfs4? Related: #1 - https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/241730/traffic-obfuscation-under-targeted-surveillance https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/241730/traffic-... #2 - https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/issues/4300 https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/issues/4300 #3 - https://github.com/tst-race/race-docs/blob/main/race-channels.md https://github.com/tst-race/race-docs/blob/main/race-channel...
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      > Which are you leaning towards to and why? Heavily sandboxed SimpleX that's firewalled to block any non-Tor traffic. Chose this one because it allows for offline message sending/receiving, despite privacy implications, and because it has clients people will actually use. Cwtch doesn't let you send messages when the recipient is offline by virtue of how it works, which is more secure, but inconvenient. When evaluating Cwtch, I think I read somewhere it might send identifying metadata to your recipient, or something similar, but I might just be making that up. I'll have to look up what I was reading. > > identify that and when a user is using SimpleX. > Does this apply to Cwtch? With Cwtch you're running two hidden services, one on either end of the chat, and that happens over Tor with no middleman service, so no. A passive network observer can tell when you're connecting to Tor, but you can attempt to obfuscate that with transports.
agnishom 1y ago
"It's also only decentralized as much as public email infrastructure is decentralized." That's already a lot more decentralized than most web services we use on a daily basis
- woodruffw 1y ago
  In what sense? I think in practice there are significantly fewer widely used email service providers than there are web service providers. If you threw a rock at a crowd of people, you'd probably hit someone with a Gmail or Outlook-managed inbox.
  - jjav 1y ago
    > In what sense? Email is an open interoperable standard, owned by nobody. You can run your own email infrastructure just fine (I do, many do). So it is fundamentally different from all the proprietary walled gardens which have a single owner that controls everything.
    - Bluestein 1y ago
      All of which is true and praiseworthy.- Sadly, as with many things, Gmail effectively controls it de facto, nowadays ...
    - woodruffw 1y ago
      Signal is notably not proprietary. And email is de-facto owned by a small handful of service providers. Telling Joe Shmoe that he should run his own email infrastructure instead of using literally anything actually built for E2EE is an ideological argument, not one grounded in Joe’s message security expectations.
      - jjav 1y ago
        > Signal is notably not proprietary. See parallel response. Open source is not the same as an open interoperable standard. > And email is de-facto owned by a small handful of service providers. No, not really. Yes there are large providers who manage a lot of people, but it is not owned by anyone. > Telling Joe Shmoe that he should run his own email infrastructure That's not necessary either. Joe can get his email from any of thousands of providers ranging from large to tiny if he doesn't want to run it. Service can also be delegated in various ways depending on comfort and convenience. For instance, one mixed setup is to manage receiving by one provider (which could be oneself, to guarantee you can't get locked out) and delegating sending to a different provider (self or others). It's also easy to delegate to a tech-savvy friend or family member. I run email for my own domains but also for most family members and a few consulting businesses in our circle. This is the power of open standards codified in RFCs. It is what the Internet was meant to be. Walled gardens was never part of the plan.
SwtCyber 1y ago
Definitely not for threat models where anonymity is critical
DavideNL 1y ago
> but if you need to keep your identity, social graph and the fact that you conversed with certain people obfuscated Does Signal, the current "privacy respecting, secure default" for mainstream people, provide this?
woodruffw 1y ago
I would go a step further: this is not secure. Forward secrecy and metadata privacy are table stakes in any modern secure messaging design, and Delta Chat has neither.
- em-bee 1y ago
  deltachat devs are working on forward secrecy. and as for metadata, as long as the messages are sent from my personal email server to the destinations email server using a TLS connection, the metadata is accessible only on those two servers. sure, if i use gmail then google has my social graph. but so do whatsapp and telegram and others. yes, more private options exist, but for example in one group of friends right now the choice now is between whatsapp and deltachat. whatsapp because most people in the group already use it. deltachat because most people already have email. signal or matrix are not under consideration.
  - woodruffw 1y ago
    > deltachat devs are working on forward secrecy That’s great, but I’m not holding my breath. PGP isn’t architecturally well-equipped to provide forward secrecy. In the mean time, I think it’s borderline negligent to put this in the category of secure messaging; the world’s expectations for security baselines have moved on beyond the mid-2000s. (My reference point here is Keybase, which built a very user-friendly and misuse-resistant encrypted chat on top of PGP in the mid-2010s. They couldn’t get to forward secrecy either with PGP as their substrate.) > as for metadata, as long as the messages are sent from my personal email server to the destinations email server using a TLS connection, the metadata is accessible only on those two servers. To the best of my knowledge, MTA-STS adoption rates are still abysmal[1]. It’s a move in the right direction, but this kind of shambolic jigsaw approach to communication security isn’t appropriate in 2025. Sensitive messages should go over protocols designed to carry them. [1]: https://www.uriports.com/blog/mta-sts-survey-update-2025/ https://www.uriports.com/blog/mta-sts-survey-update-2025/
    - em-bee 1y ago
      PGP isn’t architecturally well-equipped to provide forward secrecy i have no insight into the development, but i suppose that swapping out PGP for something entirely different should technically be possible. they did develop a peer to peer protocol with forward security for real-time messages that sidesteps SMTP entirely. seems a bit wierd given the premise, but the devs are at least not limiting themselves to SMTP and PGP.

School-Cotton 1y ago

> It's also only decentralized as much as public email infrastructure is decentralized. So… entirely? What am I missing about your point?

binary132 1y ago
Public email infrastructure is almost entirely dominated by Google. This is worth looking into if you’re not familiar with the state of affairs
heavyset_go 1y ago
I run my own email servers, but 99% of mail goes over Google/Microsoft/AWS/etc email servers anyway. In practice, it's quite centralized and you're always at risk of one of the big providers locking your servers out of their network or putting you on a blocklist they all use.

singpolyma3 1y ago

It is not possible to hide the fact that you conversed with a certain person from your service provider. That's part of why being able to choose a service provider is so important.

heavyset_go 1y ago
Theoretically, Cwtch[1] would afford you this obfuscation assuming Tor is secure and your adversary isn't nation-state level. Similarly, using SimpleX private message routing via .onion message relays and the fact that the system has no identifiers can also afford you that obfuscation. [1] https://docs.cwtch.im/ https://docs.cwtch.im/
- johnisgood 1y ago
  Differences between Cwtch, and SimpleX? Which are you leaning towards to and why? According to https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplexmq/blob/stable/protocol/overview-tjr.md https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplexmq/blob/stable/protoc...: > identify that and when a user is using SimpleX. Does this apply to Cwtch? Also, is it not possible to obfsucate this traffic? Tor with obfs4? Related: #1 - https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/241730/traffic-obfuscation-under-targeted-surveillance https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/241730/traffic-... #2 - https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/issues/4300 https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/issues/4300 #3 - https://github.com/tst-race/race-docs/blob/main/race-channels.md https://github.com/tst-race/race-docs/blob/main/race-channel...
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    > Which are you leaning towards to and why? Heavily sandboxed SimpleX that's firewalled to block any non-Tor traffic. Chose this one because it allows for offline message sending/receiving, despite privacy implications, and because it has clients people will actually use. Cwtch doesn't let you send messages when the recipient is offline by virtue of how it works, which is more secure, but inconvenient. When evaluating Cwtch, I think I read somewhere it might send identifying metadata to your recipient, or something similar, but I might just be making that up. I'll have to look up what I was reading. > > identify that and when a user is using SimpleX. > Does this apply to Cwtch? With Cwtch you're running two hidden services, one on either end of the chat, and that happens over Tor with no middleman service, so no. A passive network observer can tell when you're connecting to Tor, but you can attempt to obfuscate that with transports.

agnishom 1y ago

"It's also only decentralized as much as public email infrastructure is decentralized." That's already a lot more decentralized than most web services we use on a daily basis

woodruffw 1y ago
In what sense? I think in practice there are significantly fewer widely used email service providers than there are web service providers. If you threw a rock at a crowd of people, you'd probably hit someone with a Gmail or Outlook-managed inbox.
- jjav 1y ago
  > In what sense? Email is an open interoperable standard, owned by nobody. You can run your own email infrastructure just fine (I do, many do). So it is fundamentally different from all the proprietary walled gardens which have a single owner that controls everything.
  - Bluestein 1y ago
    All of which is true and praiseworthy.- Sadly, as with many things, Gmail effectively controls it de facto, nowadays ...
  - woodruffw 1y ago
    Signal is notably not proprietary. And email is de-facto owned by a small handful of service providers. Telling Joe Shmoe that he should run his own email infrastructure instead of using literally anything actually built for E2EE is an ideological argument, not one grounded in Joe’s message security expectations.
    - jjav 1y ago
      > Signal is notably not proprietary. See parallel response. Open source is not the same as an open interoperable standard. > And email is de-facto owned by a small handful of service providers. No, not really. Yes there are large providers who manage a lot of people, but it is not owned by anyone. > Telling Joe Shmoe that he should run his own email infrastructure That's not necessary either. Joe can get his email from any of thousands of providers ranging from large to tiny if he doesn't want to run it. Service can also be delegated in various ways depending on comfort and convenience. For instance, one mixed setup is to manage receiving by one provider (which could be oneself, to guarantee you can't get locked out) and delegating sending to a different provider (self or others). It's also easy to delegate to a tech-savvy friend or family member. I run email for my own domains but also for most family members and a few consulting businesses in our circle. This is the power of open standards codified in RFCs. It is what the Internet was meant to be. Walled gardens was never part of the plan.

SwtCyber 1y ago

Definitely not for threat models where anonymity is critical

DavideNL 1y ago

> but if you need to keep your identity, social graph and the fact that you conversed with certain people obfuscated Does Signal, the current "privacy respecting, secure default" for mainstream people, provide this?

woodruffw 1y ago

I would go a step further: this is not secure. Forward secrecy and metadata privacy are table stakes in any modern secure messaging design, and Delta Chat has neither.

em-bee 1y ago
deltachat devs are working on forward secrecy. and as for metadata, as long as the messages are sent from my personal email server to the destinations email server using a TLS connection, the metadata is accessible only on those two servers. sure, if i use gmail then google has my social graph. but so do whatsapp and telegram and others. yes, more private options exist, but for example in one group of friends right now the choice now is between whatsapp and deltachat. whatsapp because most people in the group already use it. deltachat because most people already have email. signal or matrix are not under consideration.
- woodruffw 1y ago
  > deltachat devs are working on forward secrecy That’s great, but I’m not holding my breath. PGP isn’t architecturally well-equipped to provide forward secrecy. In the mean time, I think it’s borderline negligent to put this in the category of secure messaging; the world’s expectations for security baselines have moved on beyond the mid-2000s. (My reference point here is Keybase, which built a very user-friendly and misuse-resistant encrypted chat on top of PGP in the mid-2010s. They couldn’t get to forward secrecy either with PGP as their substrate.) > as for metadata, as long as the messages are sent from my personal email server to the destinations email server using a TLS connection, the metadata is accessible only on those two servers. To the best of my knowledge, MTA-STS adoption rates are still abysmal[1]. It’s a move in the right direction, but this kind of shambolic jigsaw approach to communication security isn’t appropriate in 2025. Sensitive messages should go over protocols designed to carry them. [1]: https://www.uriports.com/blog/mta-sts-survey-update-2025/ https://www.uriports.com/blog/mta-sts-survey-update-2025/
  - em-bee 1y ago
    PGP isn’t architecturally well-equipped to provide forward secrecy i have no insight into the development, but i suppose that swapping out PGP for something entirely different should technically be possible. they did develop a peer to peer protocol with forward security for real-time messages that sidesteps SMTP entirely. seems a bit wierd given the premise, but the devs are at least not limiting themselves to SMTP and PGP.