Frequently Asked Questions: Thunderbird Mobile and K-9 Mail
blog.thunderbird.net
An evolving list of frequently asked questions about Thunderbird on Android, and K-9 Mail joining the Thunderbird family.
  • MrFunnyMoustache@lemmy.ml
    4·
    12 hours ago

    Yeah, took me by surprise to see thunderbird on my phone. I remember talks about K9 planning to join the Thunderbird project and got excited, but completely forgot about it until I saw it on my phone.

  • Handles@leminal.spaceEnglish
    13·
    1 day ago

    I think it’s weird that they insisted all along that K-9 would remain its own branded version of the joint app. Yet according to f-droid, my newly updated K-9 (same app I’ve used for a decade and a half) is now one of two “Thunderbird for beta testers” listed…

    It’s still K-9 in my local app menu, the icon is the same, but I guess the Thunderbird project are sort of working out how to manage two differently branded versions of the same app?

  • kyub@discuss.tchncs.de
    222·
    1 day ago

    Just FYI I installed the apk from the github repo (not the google play version) via Obtainium a few days ago and it tried to make a connection to 2 cloudflare IPs during setup of my account. Without prior consent or any mention. So just be aware that there is still some form of telemetry or unwanted connections happening, even though they removed the telemetry flowing to Mozilla’s own telemetry endpoint. K-9 had zero of this, it just spoke with your mail servers and that was it. So be careful and block outgoing app connections by default. I did not analyze the data being sent, just that there were those 2 unwanted connectiins happening.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
      8·
      20 hours ago

      Isn’t this part of the auto configuration stuff? Basically there’s a standard where you can add some DNS records to your domain and/or a standard file on your website so e-mail clients can automatically prepopulate all the email settings so you only need to worry about entering your email and password.

      • ghen
        3·
        12 hours ago

        That might be it, Thunderbird works really well with auto configuration of domains that it doesn’t know but has DNS entries.

      • Krzd@lemmy.world
        102·
        1 day ago

        Nope. They initially added some data scraping parts, and apparently still use some form of telemetry without proper disclosure.

          • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
            1·
            12 hours ago

            This hasn’t been proven in any way. Original op in link states it could be discovery for email domains.

            • kixik@lemmy.ml
              3·
              11 hours ago

              What they’re saying there is that when trying to auto detect the server configurations, there are unexpected connections to cloudfare IPs, which didn’t usually happen with K9. Who posted the concern associated this to telemetry, but the answers are pointing a different direction. But at this point it just guesses, :(

              I guess some more formal traffic inspection needs to happen to understand if truly there’s unexpected traffic, where it is directed to, and hopefully infer somehow its purpose. The guesses about what’s happening suggest it’s just about the auto connection, but again, just guesses.

              I explored the configurations, and I didn’t find anything about telemetry, and so neither how to disable it. K9 does not have an about:config advanced configuration like desktop Thunderbird does, so if there’s truly telemetry or some other sort of information leakage, then after proving it, perhaps developers realize they can do better. But so far nothing really proving telemetry or information leakage.

  • maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone
    36·
    1 day ago

    FYI this is from 2022 but is relevant because Thunderbird (and K9 v8) just landed in F-Droid (and other android package managers I guess but I haven’t checked).

    The process of importing from K9 Mail worked without issue for me. There is also the option to import from desktop using a QR scanner (or some kind of scanner, again I didn’t go down that rabbit hole).

    • jonne@infosec.pub
      7·
      20 hours ago

      Thunderbird is finally out of beta so you can get it through the play store or F-Droid. K-9 itself was also updated so it’s now basically a K-9 branded version of Thunderbird.

    • communism@lemmy.ml
      3·
      1 day ago

      Idk about other sources, but I get my apk directly from GitHub via Obtainium, and my app recently changed from K-9 Mail to Thunderbird. Icon, app name, and app theming changed. This has been in the works for a while but seems like they’re officially switched the apk.

      • jonne@infosec.pub
        2·
        20 hours ago

        K-9 is probably an Android only client? They’d have to either find an open source iOS app to build on, or build a new one from scratch.

      • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
        101·
        1 day ago

        Mozilla is non-profit. I wish they could sell it as a one-time or something as I dont mind supporting them if they’re doing useful capitalistic things like that. Very few actually private mail client apps for iOS. I only know of two and Canary is not one of them