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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:
pro: Huge accessibility (all e-mail addresses worldwide)
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.
con: No indication of whether contacts are online/offline.
contra: Only group distribution lists - no real administrable chat rooms
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.
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”.
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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)
Directly via the project page: https://delta.chat/de/download (external)
Google Play Store
If Delta Chat is to be used on an Android device with Google default settings and F-Droid cannot/will not be used.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=chat.delta (external)
F-Droid
Anyone who already uses F-Droid will certainly use this source! This also applies to Google-free devices such as the “Fairphone”:
https://f-droid.org/app/com.b44t.messenger (external)
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)
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)
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:
Source: F-Droid (extern)
Project page: https://arcanechat.me (external)
Other information
References to external information:
The following overview (screenshot as of 15.12.2018) contains a lot of technically relevant information on the security of email providers:
Source / current overview: https://dismail.de/serverlist.html (external)
Setting up encryption for e-mail and making the public key available to others is not difficult …