Hi all,
Today, Tor is releasing a beta version of Tor Messenger. Compared to Adium or Pidgin (you can use your jabber address and all your contacts)--it's pretty easy to use and much safer. It's in beta, though; here's a technical post about it: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-messenger-beta-chat-over-tor-easily
Here are some differences from Adium and Pidgin--
1. It runs everything over Tor (much more secure).
2. It enforces off-the-record messaging encryption rather than just offering that as an option (as with Pidgin and Adium, etc.).
3. It disables logging of conversations (at least on your end!).
4. Memory safe language! Mostly! Except for libotr and XUL related stuff. (The developers can explain this.)
5. It's easy to set up. Obvious things are in obvious places. Here's the link to the Beta web site, which will eventually migrate to torproject.org: https://arlolra.github.io/tor-messenger-website/
6. Since you have to use it with Tor--if you can use Tor to get to a blocked service, you can use that blocked service with Tor messenger! So that's useful for censorship circumvention.
We're all using it at Tor, and we like it! Give it a shot and let us know what you think! We have other, different messengers coming down the pike; hope to release the next one soon.
Downloads:
Windows dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/tormessenger-install-0.1.0b2_en-US.exe> (https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/tormessenger-install-0.1.0b2_en-US.exe)
OS X dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/TorMessenger-0.1.0b2-osx64_en-US.dmg> (https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/TorMessenger-0.1.0b2-osx64_en-US.dmg)
Linux (32-bit) dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/tor-messenger-linux32-0.1.0b2_en-US.tar.xz> (https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/tor-messenger-linux32-0.1.0b2_en-US.tar.xz)
Linux (64-bit) dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/tor-messenger-linux64-0.1.0b2_en-US.tar.xz> (https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b2/tor-messenger-linux64-0.1.0b2_en-US.tar.xz)
To try it out, download it and you can try it out with me (address@hidden - all my handles are ridiculous).
Cheers,
Katie Krauss
for the Tor Project
address@hidden