E-Mail-Chat

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We know “e-mail” from the past - and you can use it for modern “texting”? Yes!
Communicating with formless messages is even wonderful and easy (for formal emails, however, a classic email client is better suited).

The flagship project with a modern messenger look here is “Delta Chat” - but there are also other projects such as “Dib2Qm”.
However, there are significant differences to other messenger systems:

  1. pro: Huge accessibility (all e-mail addresses worldwide)

  2. pro: There is no social pressure to install a specific program. Instead, you can communicate with any e-mail address without the recipient needing the same or a special messenger program.

  3. con: No indication of whether contacts are online/offline.

  4. contra: Only group distribution lists - no real administrable chat rooms

Spot-On

Spot-On introduced email texting long before Delta Chat and others. It’s called Poptastic and has been available since 2014. Poptastic includes SMP, forwarding secret, key renewal and status information. It is integrated into the desktop program Goldbug or the Android app Smoke.

Delta Chat

The app looks and works like a classic messenger, but uses the tried-and-tested email infrastructure amongst others with the standardized and open protocols open protocols “IMAP” and “SMTP”.

Recommendation:
If a private PGP key is already being used with the normal email program, this key should not be copied to a smartphone for security reasons. It is better to export the new key automatically created by Delta Chat and import it into the email program as an additional key.
or,
as a further alternative, set up a separate e-mail account for chat purposes only!

In addition to apps for Android and iOS, there are also desktop versions for Windows, GNU/Linux and MacOS. However, this is an Electron application It is possible to set up so-called “chat bots” for DeltaChat: https://github.com/deltachat-bot/deltabot (external) or https://github.com/simplebot-org (external).

Homepage of the project: https://delta.chat/de/ (external)
Current release notes (English): https://delta.chat/en/changelog (external)

Which source of supply?

Provider

Delta Chat is based on standardized protocols - nevertheless, there may be problems with some e-mail providers or chatting may not be possible for whatever reason. Here is an overview of providers that can be used with Delta Chat:
https://support.delta.chat/t/provider-overview (external)

Standards

In addition to the well-known protocols “IMAP” and “SMTP”, Delta Chat also uses various others:
https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-android/blob/master/standards.md#standards-used-in-delta-chat (external)

Variants

There are several variants of DeltaChat, which are collected on their site in an overview (external).

For example, ArcaneChat (formerly ‘DeltaLab’) is supplemented by various functions:

  • Support for Markdown
  • Support for stickers with Lottie animations
  • Pseudo online status indicator to easily know when a peer was recently seen (does not reveal online status, but is based on the last time an email was received from the contact)
  • Support for SVG image previews
  • Multiple color themes/skins
  • Option to delete/clear all messages in a chat
  • Video chat instance set by default
  • Incoming groups and mailing lists are muted by default
  • Replies to your messages in muted groups trigger notifications
  • More Kaomoji emoticons
  • The verification icon is displayed in the chat list for verified contacts and in the “Device messages” chat
  • Videos are played in a loop, useful for short GIF videos
  • It is possible to click OPENPGP4FPR: and mumble: links in messages
  • Option to disable the automatically generated email subject set by Delta Chat
  • When you select a message, you have additional options to easily remove/add the sender from the current group
  • Voice messages have higher compression / lower quality to save data
  • Default configuration changed: all emails are displayed by default, messages are immediately deleted from the INBOX to keep the INBOX clean, media quality set to worse to save data volume, automatic download of messages limited to 160KB, only the INBOX folder is monitored

Source: F-Droid (extern)
Project page: https://arcanechat.me (external)

Other information

References to external information:

  • List of advantages and disadvantages: hasecke.eu (external)
  • Assessment Mike Kuketz (external) from 12.07.2017

DeltaChat Logo

Interesting additional knowledge

Server list of email providers

The following overview (screenshot as of 15.12.2018) contains a lot of technically relevant information on the security of email providers:

Screen shot Security features of e-mail providers

Source / current overview: https://dismail.de/serverlist.html (external)

Encryption

Setting up encryption for e-mail and making the public key available to others is not difficult …

Security

Passwords

  • Check whether the password for the email account is in public lists: at Hasso Plattner Institute (external)
  • Background information on this at Kuketz (external)