|
Föderation EN Fr 09.05.2025 20:45:11 We increasingly hear about China travellers who use #deltachat successfully where Whatsapp and Signal fail to work. Recently a family onboarded including a 85 old mother, to prepare for China travel. Everbody succeeded, no troubles! #deltachat is all about resiliency and "just works" user experiences. Despite ongoing and prospective network blocking attempts, our apps manage to mitigate and remain working everywhere. Meanwhile we are preparing some next level resiliency/security features ;) |
|
Föderation EN Fr 09.05.2025 21:18:16 @delta That's really interesting since I have had lots of problems in China, especially away from the areas with lots of foreigners. My experience is that for long periods only Chinese IP addresses are available. Was it via email servers or chatmail servers? If email, which provider? It would be great to write this up. |
|
Föderation EN Fr 09.05.2025 23:39:29 @tomstoneham we will see to eventually write things up. But popular email servers inside china are used as well. We don't have numbers for obvious reasons. So far we have not done any active outreach to china. Fwiw it's usually the first language fully translated within hours after we update English UI strings or the web page. |
|
Föderation EN Fr 09.05.2025 21:58:44 @delta I wonder what additional resilience is possible for an app using mail client protocols. Doesn't it boil down to whether IMAP connection to the mail server is available? |
|
Föderation EN Fr 09.05.2025 23:48:13 @shuro delta has different ways to connect to chatmail relays already today. Blocking eg the IMAPS port does not prevent successful operations. The problem in describing too many details about our resiliency features in public is that we would ease the attackers work. Countering network blockades and fragmentation is ultimately a cat and mouse game. Later in the year we plan to write more about this. |
|
Föderation EN Sa 10.05.2025 11:47:18 @delta Thanks, I read the documentation on chatmail relay and I seem to get the idea. Not sure about real censorship but it should certainly help with passing corporate firewalls as many restrict mail ports. Now I want my mail server to have this too :) I like the idea of Delta Chat using normal mail server though so consider posting official instructions on expected configuration for DC to failover/prefer HTTPS. Maybe omit any circumvention trickery if any. I seem to understand how it works from the source code but it would be nice to have concise documentation. |
|
Föderation EN Sa 10.05.2025 21:55:15 @shuro Adapting chatmail relays, or some parts of it, to non-debian12 systems, or docker, or junohost or non postfix/dovecot systems or different TLS-cert setups etc. is all interesting but nothing that the chatmail relay dev team will focus on any time soon. If you figure something out, it could be linked from the current relay repo or maybe https://chatmail.at |
|
Föderation EN Sa 10.05.2025 22:31:49 @delta I meant not this but rather describing (or maybe it is out there somewhere already?) specification of Delta Chat port discovery. Something like: "if you want DC to failover to HTTPS port on your mail server you need to add this SRV record... / this autodiscover.xml file in your webroot following this syntax..." I kind of get what Delta Chat expects to see by looking at the source code and existing relays but it would be nice to know official spec - e.g. like XMPP or Matrix clearly define how clients discover ports and what servers should/may return to them. |
|
Föderation EN Sa 10.05.2025 22:44:22 @shuro there is no official spec for the network setup. Again, if you do a write up of your findings after your source code study, it might get linked from the repo/site. |
|
Föderation EN Fr 09.05.2025 23:46:13 @delta are you saying that delta chat has been blocked in china but is able to employ mitigations that have succeeded where signal's haven't? is onboarding to deltachat easier than onboarding to the use of a vpn or proxy as is standard for users in heavily censored networks? |
|
Föderation EN Fr 09.05.2025 23:51:15 @hipsterelectron no, we are not aware of specific Chinese blocking attempts currently. The blocking attempts we mentioned happen with a different country, and another one is currently gearing up (more about the latter probably next week). |
