Could you be more concrete? In what relevant way do you think it does not work as an instant messenger? Keep in mind that Delta Chat is not a theoretical thing and it works as well as any other messenger.
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a foundational technology for email, but it has some limitations. Here are some ways it could be improved:
Security: SMTP was designed in a time of less pervasive security threats. It lacks built-in encryption and authentication mechanisms, making it vulnerable to eavesdropping, spoofing, and spam. While extensions like TLS/SSL and authentication methods exist, they are not universally implemented or enforced.
Efficiency: SMTP is a “chatty” protocol, meaning it involves multiple back-and-forth exchanges between the client and server. This can lead to latency and increased resource consumption, especially for large emails or bulk sending.
Deliverability: SMTP doesn’t have mechanisms to guarantee email delivery. Emails can get lost, delayed, or filtered as spam. While techniques like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC help, they are not foolproof.
Features: SMTP is primarily designed for sending emails. It lacks features for managing email content, tracking delivery status, or handling complex email workflows.
Possible Improvements:
Mandatory Encryption: Enforcing TLS/SSL encryption for all SMTP connections would protect email content from interception.
Stronger Authentication: Implementing more robust authentication mechanisms would prevent spoofing and ensure that emails originate from legitimate senders.
Enhanced Deliverability: Developing mechanisms to track email delivery, provide feedback on delivery failures, and reduce spam filtering would improve deliverability.
More Efficient Communication: Exploring alternative protocols or extensions that reduce the “chattiness” of SMTP could improve efficiency.
Integration with other technologies: Integrating SMTP with other technologies like REST APIs or message queues could enable more complex email workflows and features.
It’s important to note that some of these improvements are already being addressed through extensions and best practices. However, there is still room for improvement in making SMTP a more secure, efficient, and reliable technology.
That said, it looks like Delta Chat doesn’t actually use SMTP, having scanned through the website. Though I’m honestly unsure either way as it was only a scan.
Never mind:
Delta Chat doesn’t use its own proprietary protocol. Instead, it cleverly leverages the existing email infrastructure for message delivery.
Here’s how it works:
Core Protocol: IMAP/SMTP - Delta Chat primarily uses the standard Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) for receiving messages and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) for sending them. These are the same protocols your regular email client uses.
Encryption: Autocrypt & OpenPGP - To ensure secure and private communication, Delta Chat implements end-to-end encryption using the Autocrypt standard and the OpenPGP standard. This means your messages are encrypted in such a way that only the intended recipient can decrypt and read them.
Secure Key Exchange: SecureJoin - Delta Chat also utilizes the SecureJoin protocol for secure key exchange. This helps to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks and ensures that only authorized parties can establish secure communication.
In essence, Delta Chat works by:
Sending encrypted messages as emails: When you send a message in Delta Chat, it’s actually sent as an encrypted email to the recipient’s email address.
Receiving encrypted messages as emails: Delta Chat constantly checks your email inbox for new encrypted emails that are meant for you.
Decrypting and displaying messages: When a new encrypted email arrives, Delta Chat decrypts it and displays it to you in the chat interface.
This approach has several advantages:
Decentralization: No central server is required to store your messages, making it more resistant to censorship and single points of failure.
Openness: It leverages existing email infrastructure, making it interoperable with any email provider.
Security: End-to-end encryption ensures that your messages remain private and secure.
If you’re interested in learning more about the technical details, you can check out the cryptographic analysis of Delta Chat available on the Cryptology ePrint Archive: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/918
PGP is a very curious choice. A quick Google search says a downside of this is that it does not provide “forward secrecy”. From the Wikipedia page on forward secrecy, it prevents things like the following.
If an adversary can steal (or obtain through a court order) this static (long term) signing key, the adversary can masquerade as the server to the client and as the client to the server and implement a classic man-in-the-middle attack.
Yes, I really have t looked into this before. I just vaguely remembered jokes about PGP from a security class a while back, so looked it up. It does look like the encryption scheme used in XMPP does solve this issue.
Wikipedia saves the day again:
OMEMO is an extension to the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for multi-client end-to-end encryption developed by Andreas Straub. According to Straub, OMEMO uses the Double Ratchet Algorithm “to provide multi-end to multi-end encryption, allowing messages to be synchronized securely across multiple clients, even if some of them are offline”.[1] The name “OMEMO” is a recursive acronym for “OMEMO Multi-End Message and Object Encryption”. It is an open standard based on the Double Ratchet Algorithm and the Personal Eventing Protocol (PEP, XEP-0163).[2] OMEMO offers future and forward secrecy and deniability with message synchronization and offline delivery.
I asked specifically for relevant issues and you just link general issues with smtp that have no impact on Delta Chat?
SMTP is not secure
Delta Chat sends encrypted messages over it so that’s irrelevant.
SMTP is not efficiency
Your phone can run LLMs, it can send a couple packets. Also this “chattyness” can be seen as an advantage as it is extremely robust and works on any network however inconsistent.
SMTP doesn’t have a way to ensure stuff is delivered
Yeah duh? It’s decentralized. You can’t ensure that the recipient doesn’t take down their server?…
Etc. I feel like I’m wasting my time replying to all these because it seems you didn’t even take the time to read them yourself.
I feel like I’m wasting my time replying to all these because it seems you didn’t even take the time to read them yourself.
I’m here trying to learn about Delta Chat and why you think it’s a good app given the drawbacks of the approach they’ve taken. Over the years there’s been an incredible amount of messengers pop up, 90 million from Google alone and none have opted for SMTP. There’s surely a reason for that. From what I’ve learned, mostly thanks to Gemini, because holy fuck the Delta Chat website feels like something from 20 years ago and is purposely vague, the solution that Delta has gone for is just to add more layers. Again, something that the world has repeatedly opted against. I’m trying to understand why it’s considered a good idea in this case and why so many teams and startups have decided not to use this methodology until now?
Jesus Christ, being curious shouldn’t feel like a chore.
It’s considered a good idea because it runs over omnipresent, already-existent, distributed infrastructure. In other words, for this particular chat app, you don’t even need to create an account. That is at very least an interesting and noteworthy feature.
So if you don’t need to create an account, how do you know you’re talking to who you think you’re talking to?
I can see this being valuable as a Lemmy style service where I’m sharing information and reading information but want to be anonymous. But not a good service if I want to talk to my mom about a sensitive subject and protect my privacy.
If you want to use an LLM that’s fine, but if you’re cutting and pasting it into a discussion you should warn other people that it’s not human generated.
And most of it isn’t wrong, it’s just a giant wall of text that’s largely irrelevant to the conversation.
Wall of text? I provided information requested and then went back and provided more information to clear up a claim I got wrong. Let’s not focus on how we get the information, but rather what the information is. If it’s not for you personally, just move on.
So not an instant messaging protocol but rather a technology that the whole world would do differently if they could go back in time?
Could you be more concrete? In what relevant way do you think it does not work as an instant messenger? Keep in mind that Delta Chat is not a theoretical thing and it works as well as any other messenger.
Regarding SMTP:
That said, it looks like Delta Chat doesn’t actually use SMTP, having scanned through the website. Though I’m honestly unsure either way as it was only a scan.Never mind:
PGP is a very curious choice. A quick Google search says a downside of this is that it does not provide “forward secrecy”. From the Wikipedia page on forward secrecy, it prevents things like the following.
If an adversary can steal (or obtain through a court order) this static (long term) signing key, the adversary can masquerade as the server to the client and as the client to the server and implement a classic man-in-the-middle attack.
Thanks for pointing this out. I’m guessing part of this is why so many messengers either create a new protocol or choose XMPP
Yes, I really have t looked into this before. I just vaguely remembered jokes about PGP from a security class a while back, so looked it up. It does look like the encryption scheme used in XMPP does solve this issue.
Wikipedia saves the day again:
OMEMO is an extension to the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for multi-client end-to-end encryption developed by Andreas Straub. According to Straub, OMEMO uses the Double Ratchet Algorithm “to provide multi-end to multi-end encryption, allowing messages to be synchronized securely across multiple clients, even if some of them are offline”.[1] The name “OMEMO” is a recursive acronym for “OMEMO Multi-End Message and Object Encryption”. It is an open standard based on the Double Ratchet Algorithm and the Personal Eventing Protocol (PEP, XEP-0163).[2] OMEMO offers future and forward secrecy and deniability with message synchronization and offline delivery.
I get that you’re using AI directly related to your point, but it’s still a lot of shitty AI spam.
Use it for your own research, but don’t foist that on us.
I asked specifically for relevant issues and you just link general issues with smtp that have no impact on Delta Chat?
Delta Chat sends encrypted messages over it so that’s irrelevant.
Your phone can run LLMs, it can send a couple packets. Also this “chattyness” can be seen as an advantage as it is extremely robust and works on any network however inconsistent.
Yeah duh? It’s decentralized. You can’t ensure that the recipient doesn’t take down their server?…
Etc. I feel like I’m wasting my time replying to all these because it seems you didn’t even take the time to read them yourself.
I’m here trying to learn about Delta Chat and why you think it’s a good app given the drawbacks of the approach they’ve taken. Over the years there’s been an incredible amount of messengers pop up, 90 million from Google alone and none have opted for SMTP. There’s surely a reason for that. From what I’ve learned, mostly thanks to Gemini, because holy fuck the Delta Chat website feels like something from 20 years ago and is purposely vague, the solution that Delta has gone for is just to add more layers. Again, something that the world has repeatedly opted against. I’m trying to understand why it’s considered a good idea in this case and why so many teams and startups have decided not to use this methodology until now?
Jesus Christ, being curious shouldn’t feel like a chore.
It’s considered a good idea because it runs over omnipresent, already-existent, distributed infrastructure. In other words, for this particular chat app, you don’t even need to create an account. That is at very least an interesting and noteworthy feature.
So if you don’t need to create an account, how do you know you’re talking to who you think you’re talking to?
I can see this being valuable as a Lemmy style service where I’m sharing information and reading information but want to be anonymous. But not a good service if I want to talk to my mom about a sensitive subject and protect my privacy.
As a heads up, the person you’re arguing with seems to be using an LLM to generate text.
I would down vote and move on. It’s not a real discussion.
Downvote for what? What part is wrong?
Wasting other people’s time.
If you want to use an LLM that’s fine, but if you’re cutting and pasting it into a discussion you should warn other people that it’s not human generated.
And most of it isn’t wrong, it’s just a giant wall of text that’s largely irrelevant to the conversation.
Wall of text? I provided information requested and then went back and provided more information to clear up a claim I got wrong. Let’s not focus on how we get the information, but rather what the information is. If it’s not for you personally, just move on.
Thank you