Russian Cheburnet: How to chat under very restrictive conditions

Hello everyone!

Maybe not everyone knows, but in Russia, in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO), they have already launched a full-fledged Cheburnet

It is currently being tested in this region, where there are few cities, and it may later spread to other parts of the country.

For now, it’s only in mobile internet, but still. A list of about 20 websites opens.

In this situation, my friends and I decided to test a messenger that allows communication even when VPN won’t help anymore. Maybe this information will help someone, or if you know someone who could benefit from it.

Delta Chat

A chat application that uses mail servers as a backend.

At the moment, this is practically the only solution in this situation.

It’s simple — you need an email approved in Russia, such as Yandex or Mail.ru. Then you install the messenger and during setup choose:

After that, you may need to edit the settings and check that IMAP is enabled in your email https://mail.yandex.ru/?dpda=yes#setup/client

Also, the password is an application password, not your regular one.

In Yandex, it is created here https://id.yandex.ru/security/app-passwords

In the Delta Chat settings, you can check that everything is correct:

Once everything is set up, you can start adding people via a link or QR code given to you by your contact.

The app looks like this:

And the chat itself:

During testing, we faced the issue that the chat doesn’t refresh if you just sit and look at it))
It works if you switch to another window or simply lock/unlock the phone.

In any case, you can find out about messages from incoming emails in the Yandex.Mail app, and for me, that’s the signal to check Delta Chat.

In the mailbox, it looks like encrypted emails:

Enjoy using Cheburnet Delta Chat!