this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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Privacy
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DeltaChat. I don't use it myself because it's built on electron (which basically excludes 99% of modern chat clients); but as it's technically an email client turned into a chat client, we can assume you're protected by PGP when writing to most users, and with the added effect of not needing to convince anyone to install anything since from their end it's just an email.
Someone here recently linked to this gem https://www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem/
The article warns PGP over Email is a safety concern. They suggest Signal instead. (And several other tools to replace PGP)
PGP is unfortunately one of the only reliable ways to get encrypted messages into and out of China. Most of that article is kind of nitpicking IMO. The only major cryptographic issue is lack of forward security. The rest can be dealt with if you have a bit of know how.
Sure, I see where you are coming from. I used to be in favor of PGP as well, but I think I just was conditioned to it because it was everywhere, eg Linux repositories. The argument I found more convincing in this article is that PGP is a swiss-army knife. You might want to use it in an emergency, but professionals have special tools for each different task. In fact, the article suggests very nice alternatives for each task: Encrypt with age , sign with minisign. Two different tasks, two different tools, no need for a web of trust. Just for the arguments sake why do you think that PGP is worth it given the burden of entry?
E-mail is horrible for privacy, spam, instant messaging, etc. PGP "works" in very limited scenarios, and e-mail is not really one of them.
Plus these two statements seem unplausible for me:
and
I disagree with the first statement, most users don't know what PGP is and therefore don't have keys, so you can't encrypt anything to them. The only way most users would use PGP is if something sets it up for them, alá protonmail or my using some special client. Since you've said that from their end it is just an e-mail, how does Deltachat add any meaningful encryption?