arcanechat-android/store/text.md

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Chat over e-mail. Simple and Elegant. No silos, no tracking: Privacy by Design.

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Delta Chat feels like Whatsapp or Telegram but does not involve centralized control or tracking. How does it achieve that? Delta Chat is technically an e-mail application but looks like a modern chat interface. E-Mail in a new dress if you will. All data is stored on your devices only. No Addressbook or other personal data is going anywhere. There simply are no Delta Chat servers where anything could go to.

Use Delta Chat with anyone out of billions of people: just use their e-mail address. It's fine if your contacts answer with their own mail program. They don't need to install Delta Chat or visit some website. If you send a picture, audio message or document to a Chat group your chat recipients will see a nice regular e-mail with an attachment. If they send a message or picture back, you will see it in your Chat for this contact. It's that simple.

Delta Chat sends e-mails using your e-mail account and provider of choice. Your mobile number does not matter. You don't need to have a mobile number in order to use Delta Chat and you can change mobile numbers without causing any trouble for Delta Chat. You can export all your Chat data on one device, import it on a new device and happily continue chatting.

Delta Chat establishes end-to-end encryption automatically if chat participants already heart from each other before. On a two-people chat just send a "Hi!" message and already receive an encrypted reply. Your Chat is now end-to-end encrypted. End-to-End encryption not only happens between Delta Chat apps but also if messaging with other e-mail apps if they support the Autocrypt Level 1 encryption standard. Moreover, Delta Chat offers an experimental "verified group" chat that guarantees end-to-end encryption to be secure against active network or provider attacks. This unique, experimental feature is based on recent usability and cryptographic research and is going to be refined after further user-testing with at-risk users in 2019.

Delta Chat offers instant chatting and synchronization across devices. Messages sent on one device will quickly show up on other devices.
There is an early iPhone version and downloads for Linux and Mac OS Laptops. Windows support is in the works. All Desktop versions can be used standalone. There is no need to have an Android or iPhone setup.

Delta Chat is a relatively young project for what it offers already. It employs a pragmatic and usability-driven approach to decentralized messaging. No re-inventing of wheel technology unless it causes actual trouble or concern. Most popular programming languages and many human languages are involved in the development of Delta Chat apps and the various activities around it. We rather often think about removing technology than adding yet more of it. Trying to keep things maintainable and understandable.

We are grateful for any help, be it contributing good bug reports, helping other users on the forum, participating in our open development with PRs and reviews, translations to more languages, working on new bots, setting up new experimental mail servers ... or a donation if you can. We currently use donations to enable contributors to join us at our repeated one-week long gatherings -- where we develop and user-test with locals and evolve new directions and plans.