‘Off-the-Record’ Instant Messaging (Regaining privacy in online conversations)
Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging allows you to have private conversations over instant messaging by providing:
- Encryption - No one else can read your instant messages.
- Authentication - You are assured the correspondent is who you think it is.
- Deniability - The messages you send do not have digital signatures that are checkable by a third party. Anyone can forge messages after a conversation to make them look like they came from you. However, during a conversation, your correspondent is assured the messages he sees are authentic and unmodified.
- Perfect forward secrecy - If you lose control of your private keys, no previous conversation is compromised.
Technical explanation (good starting point is: 17m22s)
You can achieve this by using the cross-platform (Windows, Linux; use Adium for Mac), multi-protocol (AIM, MSN, XMPP, etc) and open source instant messaging client Pidgin, and installing the OTR plugin.
Other OTR-enabled software. Configuring the OTR plugin web tutorial. Authenticating a chat buddy web tutorial.
Video tutorial
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