Email

Your handle is also an email address: yourhandle@chnlme.net (chnlme.com reaches the same place). CHANNEL can use email in two different ways, and each has its own switch for each profile in Settings › Messages: Email with people outside CHANNEL and Email as a backup route.

Email with people outside CHANNEL

People who do not use CHANNEL can write to your handle address, and you can write to any email address from New Message.

• This is ordinary email. It is not end-to-end encrypted. CHANNEL's encryption ends at our mail server. The mail services between you and the other person, and CHANNEL's mail server, can read it on the way.
• Incoming mail is reduced to plain text and arrives as a yellow Email message. Links in it are shown as text: they are never opened, followed or previewed for you.
• Mail filed into a conversation is announced like any other message, with that conversation's sound. A muted conversation stays silent.
• Attachments and remote images are not brought in. A line under the words says One attachment not shown. or N attachments not shown.
• If Push is on for the profile, new mail wakes your phone the way a message does, quietly and without saying what arrived. The wake lapses after 30 days without a check for mail; the mail then waits for the phone's next ordinary check.
• On your own card, Add my handle address adds an address made from your handle and proves it at once, with no code. If Email is off for the profile, this turns it on.
• A first mail from a new address arrives as a request, under Email, with Accept and Refuse. Refusing blocks that address on this device; the sender is not told.
• In New Message, an address you type is looked up as a CHANNEL contact first, and CHANNEL is used when it is one. Typing mailto: before the address sends ordinary email even when the address belongs to a CHANNEL contact.
• If this switch is off when you write to an email address, CHANNEL asks Turn on Email with people outside CHANNEL? Nothing is sent unless you turn it on.
• Mail you send has the subject “CHANNEL Message” (or “Re:” and their subject when you answer an email) and ends with one line: Sent with CHANNEL Messenger.

Email as a backup route

When nothing else has delivered a message to one of your CHANNEL contacts, email can carry it. Its letter is E.

• The message stays sealed. Sent to a linked contact's CHANNEL handle address, the email carries the same encrypted message the other routes carry; only their CHANNEL app can open it.
• It is less private than CHANNEL's other routes. The mail services on the way see your handle address, their handle address and when the mail was sent.
• Sent to any other address on their card, it is ordinary email, as above, and needs Email with people outside CHANNEL on as well.
• It is tried last, after Bluetooth, direct Wi-Fi, the local network, direct internet and our server, and only after the wait you choose in Wait before sending by email (6, 12, 24 or 48 hours, or Never). Send by email in a message's menu sends it now.
• It needs the switch on for that contact (Send by email as a last resort on their page), email on at both ends, and an address for them on your card, either published by them or typed by you.
• Only text goes this way. Pictures, voice messages, files and locations do not.
• Calls never go by email.
• With this switch off, your profile refuses sealed CHANNEL mail that arrives by email: it is not opened or kept. Your contacts stop offering E for you, and an email sent to you anyway is refused, so its sender is told it was not sent. Turning it back on reverses both.
• With this switch off, Send by email is not offered in a message's menu.
• An email-routed message shows one status: Sending by email, Sent by email, Delivered, or Not sent, with its reason. A sealed email with no receipt is sent again when email is the only route. A Send by email tap that was refused is never sent again on its own.
• A receipt for a message that came to you by email goes back by email only when no other route can carry it, in one mail for everything waiting for that person. Their Sending by email then becomes Delivered. With this switch off, or another route working, nothing is emailed.

The E light beside B W L 6 I is lit only while the email route to that contact is open. While a message is still in its wait, a lit E means only that email could carry it; nothing has gone by email yet.

What CHANNEL keeps

• Incoming mail is turned into a sealed CHANNEL message as it arrives and waits in your mailbox on our server like any other message. Our mail server keeps no copy.
• The mail services it passes through, including the service we send through, keep their own copies under their own rules, and CHANNEL cannot delete those.

Secure Mode

Both switches are on for an ordinary profile. Turning on Secure Mode turns both off, and each can be turned back on by itself. Email with people outside CHANNEL is never end-to-end encrypted. The backup route keeps messages sealed, but the mail services see who writes to whom. A profile in Secure Mode does not advertise an email address on its card. With the backup route off, a sealed CHANNEL message that arrives by email is refused and not kept.

Paying

Sending email is part of a paid plan; receiving it is free. During the beta it is open to every tester, and nobody is asked for a code.

English is the reference text; any translation is a convenience. Help is stored on this phone and never contacts anyone.