COI – Chat Over IMAP • Hacker News Board

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#131

Post by richardwhiuk » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

deadbunny wrote: post #108

enough wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also run your own mail servers, even non-technical people could do that with for example https://thehelm.com/ . Haven't tried it out myself, though.

Which solves nothing if the other party's email is provided by Google. Google is still getting your chats.

XMPP and Matrix other people can host their servers on Google as well.

Fundamentally, if you don't trust the decisions of the person you are talking with, you can't guarantee the privacy of your chats.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#132

Post by richardwhiuk » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

m0dest wrote: post #111

projektfu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can’t be default because the protocol is degradable by design. I would agree that they could advocate a method to harmonize all COI-aware IMAP servers. But it’s hard to get E2E encryption in a heterogeneous, legacy environment.

Support for S/MIME encryption is pretty ubiquitous at this point, right? There are practical issues with CAs, but nothing insurmountable.

Not even close to ubiquitous.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#133

Post by m0dest » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

This is super clever, and I hope this takes off.

At the same time, I have to worry: SMTP is forever, but I'm not so sure that IMAP is forever.

Email is increasingly becoming a fragmented oligopoly, and the major players are promoting their own alternative protocols. IMAP is becoming a very optional legacy feature.

If the success of this project required additional integrations with EAS and Google's mail APIs, would you do the work or reject the idea on principle?

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#134

Post by Illniyar » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

If it's basically two mails clients sending emails quickly to eachother, is there anything there that will make sure the user doesn't fill his inbox with tons of "hi","how are you" emails?

Does it delete the messages that were read, or something? If it's really going to put all the messages,is it using some kind of dedicated folder?

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#135

Post by rschulman » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

lima wrote: post #41

Arathorn wrote: post #29

> With XMPP and Matrix.org -based services you would still need to convince everyone to join your new network. Easy in theory, very complex in practice! I think they missed the the bit where Matrix is called Matrix because it bridges (matrixes) the existing networks (Slack, IRC, Telegram, Discord, XMPP, etc) in, rather than needing to convince everyone to join. But no matter, we'll just provide a COI bridge if this t…

In reality, those bridges work badly and hardly anyone uses them. I had to give up on my attempt at using Matrix as IRC client - it had questionable uptime and some channels even banned Matrix users due to frequent reconnects (on Freenode). Hackint recently shut down their Matrix bridge due to how maintenance-intensive it was (and the fact that it logged all messages in its own database). It's great in theory but imp…

This is completely the opposite of my experience. I'm in probably a dozen Freenode channels via bridge and another 5-6 Mozilla IRC channels, and haven't had a problem in as long as I can remember.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#136

Post by jlkuester7 » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:12 PM UTC

zinid wrote: post #126

Arathorn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recognized by whom? The foundations responsible for the protocols look to be pretty similar to me (both non-profit orgs), and would be equally recognized as such by the general public. Obviously XSF contributed XMPP to the IETF after 10 years or so, and perhaps we'll end up contributing Matrix to IETF or W3C or whoever too if they'll have it. > How on earth is it innovative or new? > Since you invented nothing new,…

> Obviously XSF contributed XMPP to the IETF after 10 years or so The first RFC was approved in 2004, after 5 years of XMPP development. The last RFC from XMPP WG is from 2015. > perhaps we'll end up contributing Matrix to IETF or W3C or whoever too if they'll have it So it's planned (TM). > I wonder if the XMPP community would spend less time constantly complaining about Matrix if they understood what it was :/ I wo…

Chill dude. No need to get all butthurt. If you don't like Matrix, don't use it. The rest of us will also have make the same choice for ourselves and time will tell whether Matrix has a unifying or dividing effect on chat.

I, for one, have been playing with Matrix and other protocols for awhile and have been impressed not only by the Matrix team's vision, but also by their ability to deliver on it consistently (though sometimes slower than all of us would like). The whole ecosystem has become much more polished over the past year (and the new Riot client is sweet!)

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#137

Post by 0xffff2 » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

youdontknowtho wrote: post #80

IMAP is basically just a way for attackers to test credentials. You should be very very careful about enabling IMAP. Hopefully you (or your provider) are watching the logs and can respond to abnormal login attempts.

Huh? What should we be using instead? Surely not POP.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#138

Post by jlkuester7 » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

rschulman wrote: post #135

lima wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality, those bridges work badly and hardly anyone uses them. I had to give up on my attempt at using Matrix as IRC client - it had questionable uptime and some channels even banned Matrix users due to frequent reconnects (on Freenode). Hackint recently shut down their Matrix bridge due to how maintenance-intensive it was (and the fact that it logged all messages in its own database). It's great in theory but imp…

This is completely the opposite of my experience. I'm in probably a dozen Freenode channels via bridge and another 5-6 Mozilla IRC channels, and haven't had a problem in as long as I can remember.

Same. It was a little 'interesting' to get setup (because IRC) but all-in-all it works great!

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#139

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #114

alrs wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must vary a lot. I live in the United States and I've never encountered anyone who wanted to communicate over WhatsApp.

In South Africa WhatsApp is almost required. It's ubiquitous. In Germany I'd say it's by far the most common chat client, even my parents use it.

Same in UK, I installed it as almost all my (relatively non-technical) friends and family were using it. It's much more commonly used than Facebook, or email, for direct to groups communications.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#140

Post by elamje » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

This would be awesome to make an embeddable, html form, so essentially any website you want to share links with your friends from, can be done on the website itself coming from your email address.