Hello everyone. I would like to suggest that the app have a feature that disguises itself as government messaging apps (Max, WeChat, QQ, Zalo, Soroush Plus, Bisphone, ToTok, Talaee). There are many incidents in Russia where law enforcement agencies, employers, and others require people to install the government-issued messaging app, Max, and law enforcement agencies also illegally verify (restrict) the installation of this app and can imprison people for using non-governmental apps and groups or channels they were a part of. Of course, this messaging app was created solely for surveillance. I don’t know how things work in China, but in Russia, forced installation of this app is just now happening. I’d like the app to be able to withstand visual inspection by law enforcement at a critical moment. And yes, I eagerly await the update with the app blocking feature.
Expected behavior
Switching to government app design.
Actual behavior
You will be jailed during a visual inspection by law enforcement agencies.
What kind of nonsense is this? In Russia, no one is forcing anyone to do anything — stop spreading rumors already. The Max messenger is not mandatory, and by law no one has the right to force you into anything.
At the moment, the only real issue in Russia is the so-called “whitelists,” but when using Delta Chat together with government email servers like mail.ru or yandex.ru, everything works perfectly fine.
Moreover, what you are suggesting is impossible to implement and, frankly, unnecessary.
In Russia, there may be legal consequences if a group or channel designated as a “foreign agent” is found on your phone. According to Russian laws, in particular the Federal Law “On Mass Media” and laws concerning foreign agents, distributing materials from such organizations can be considered a violation.
If a channel or group is recognized as a foreign agent, and you distribute their materials, this may be classified as participation in the activities of a foreign agent, which entails fines or other penalties, including administrative ones. In more serious cases, if this leads to charges of treason or other more serious crimes, there may also be criminal consequences.
If you are simply subscribed to a channel or are a member of a group, this may be considered a less serious violation, but depending on the situation, investigations may be conducted and penalties imposed.
That is, if you were ever subscribed to a Telegram channel and after some time forgot about its existence, but later it was added to the list of foreign agents, then you can easily be arrested if they find these channels. And even worse, if you forwarded any post to a friend or somewhere else, you could end up in prison.
And this project, in fact, is fighting for the protection of users’ correspondence data, freedom of communication, and data confidentiality.
I’m not saying to change the application’s architecture, but rather to have the option to change its design (the icon and its internal appearance), so that others don’t have any questions during visual inspection.
You’re partly right, but everything is progressing exactly as I mentioned above.
I’ll leave a link to an article that basically describes what’s happening now, and it’s not difficult to guess what will happen next. And I was specifically talking about the imitation of the application design not only in Russia (Max) but also in other similar countries(WeChat, QQ, Zalo, Soroush Plus, Bisphone, ToTok, Talaee).
I understand your concern, this is not an easy time. But it seems to me that you are exaggerating the situation. Your device is your device first of all, and by law you have the right not to give it away, because this is a violation of the article on inviolability, secrecy of personal correspondence, and so on, which is why our government decided to find another way, namely through cooperation with servers to obtain information. Of course, if you don’t know your rights, then yes, you can easily be divorced. But you’re only partially right if we’re talking about public figures, as their rights no longer apply to them, as they essentially serve as an example.
On technical feasibility, I think you’d have to write a client mimicking the official-app UI, using the Chatmail backend. I cannot imagine that skinning an existing UI would suffice.
There already exist third-party Chatmail clients, all of them intercompatible, and the devs generally welcome more third-party clients. It is all open-source and anyone may create a client. The client UI could be arranged however you like.
But if faced with this problem, it would seem a lot easier to program a fake app, which, when opened and examined, sends an alert to friends, backs up and deletes some data, then crashes the phone. Or whatever.
I want to ask you not to bring politics, Russophobia and other similar nonsense here, first of all we are discussing delta chat, and not who is imprisoning whom for what or who is threatening whom with what…
there is no need to impose your opinion regarding what is happening in any country, at the moment you are talking about Russia, ordinary people live there like everywhere else, please respect your interlocutors!
In iOS it is possible to hide apps and protect them with a PIN, FaceID or TouchID. Such a feature may also be available in some Android versions or perhaps there is an app for it.
If you’re talking about making the insides of the app look like that of some other messenger, then I honestly doubt that it’s feasible, and, most importantly, that the threat you’re describing is real. I can see how you can get in trouble for reading sussy channels and talking about sussy things, but going to jail for not having a messenger sounds too far-fetched.
Official app can not violate the trademarks of these other apps by copying their logo.
Though I think we could do what signal does by providing generic icon options that do not look like a messenger:
there is no need for any change in Delta Chat, this is a task for the launcher app, it is already the case for iOS, for android if your default launcher doesn’t allow it you can always install another launcher app that has such features like changing app icon or ideally completely hiding it.
Actually newer androids also come with something similar to iOS, it is called “private space”, search for it in the phone settings and enable it. I tested it on GrapheneOS, without google account or google services, it works like a charm:
