In conditions modern world, when technologies have already developed so that access to the personal life of any person becomes easy, the issue of encryption and secrecy of the transfer of personal data on the Internet is especially relevant. In this article, I will tell you about a secure messenger with which you can communicate without fear of being overheard.

I believe that the right to secure transmission of personal information and to anonymity on the Internet for good purposes everyone has. Therefore, I share with you the opportunity to receive it.

I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the video review of the program.

Secure messenger Tor Messenger

Before starting the installation, you need to choose in which folder you want to unpack all the program files.

Before starting, the program connects to its proxy servers and only then starts working.

From the rest this secure messenger differs in that it not only encrypts the transmitted information, but still passes all the data through several proxy servers located in different parts Sveta. Therefore, in order to read what you write in the messenger to a third party, you will have to decrypt your messages, which will be difficult. And thanks to several proxies, it will become almost impossible to find out your IP, and, accordingly, your location.

Tor Messenger passes data through several proxies and hides IP, and also encrypts transmitted messages. This makes it harder for attackers who want to know what you are writing to, to whom, and where you are.

We should also note a few inconveniences that this secure messenger has. Firstly, it is in English, you will have to translate it yourself, which is not clear. Secondly, by default, it has disabled saving history, which is logical in terms of anonymity. But for many it can be uncomfortable. Therefore, you can turn on the history in the settings, but then the security level will decrease (not that one of your relatives will read the history of correspondence from your computer, but that someone else will get into your computer via the Internet using a virus and read the files stories).

And one more thing. This secure messenger does not yet support all popular communication protocols. Let's hope that the developers still put into it what everyone is waiting for. The following protocols are currently supported:

Select the required protocol, click "Next" and enter your login information.

On the termination of the development of the anonymous messenger Tor Messenger, which in 2015. Unfortunately, during this time the project has not managed to get out of the beta testing stage. In their message, the developers explain in detail why this happened, and list the arguments in favor of stopping development.

It was originally planned that Tor Messenger would provide users with a more secure, cross-platform communication channel, whose security is realized due to the fact that all messenger traffic passes through Tor, as well as through OTR encryption. Let me remind you that the messenger supported Jabber (XMPP), IRC, Google Talk, Facebook, Twitter and so on. The developers believed that Tor Messenger would be used as a means of communication through existing social networks and IM. And although the client-server model suggests that user metadata could still settle on third-party servers, trace their path to the server, and also understand OTR encrypted messages, it would definitely be difficult.

Although the developers write that the very idea behind Tor Messenger still seems reasonable and “working”, 11 beta versions later, it was still decided to stop development. The blog cites three main reasons why this decision was made.

First, Tor Messenger was built on top of the Instantbird client, once created by the Mozilla community. Unfortunately, the development of this project was discontinued in 2017, although some of the functions migrated to Thunderbird.

Secondly, the problem of metadata that is still stored on third-party servers turned out to be more significant than originally thought, and nothing could be done about it by the Tor Messenger developers. Unfortunately, third parties were still able to identify user behavior patterns, since metadata is enough to understand exactly who a person communicates with, how often, and so on.

Thirdly, the developers admit that they simply did not have enough resources. Even after 11 versions released, Tor Messenger was still in beta and never externally audited (only two internally). Representatives of the Tor Project admitted that due to the lack of people, they had to ignore the wishes of users and even bug reports, which definitely did not benefit the project.

Now, after the development of Tor Messenger has ceased, users who still care about the privacy and protection of communications are advised to read the thematic series of articles of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. For those users who need XMPP specifically, developers are advised to pay attention to

PLEASE READ THIS

As of March 2018, Tor Messenger is NO LONGER MAINTAINED and you should NOT use it. Please see the announcement on the blog for more information.

This page is not being deleted but please do not ignore the warning above.

WARNING

Table of Contents

Overview

Tor Messenger is a cross-platform chat program that aims to be secure by default and sends all of its traffic over Tor. It supports a wide variety of transport networks, including XMPP, IRC, Twitter, and others; enables​ Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging automatically; has an easy-to-use graphical user interface; and a secure automatic updater.

See the introductory blog post for more information.

Downloads

There are no Tor Messenger downloads available. See the warning above.

instructions

On Linux, extract the bundle(s) and then run: ./start-tor-messenger.desktop

On OS X, copy the Tor Messenger application from the disk image to your local disk before running it.

See to determine where the profile folder is stored on your platform.

Note that as a policy, unencrypted one-to-one conversations are not allowed and your messages will not be transmitted if the person you are talking with does not have an OTR-enabled client. You can disable this option in the preferences to allow unencrypted communication but doing so is not recommended.

Documentation

• macOS

source code

We are doing ​ automated builds of Tor Messenger for all platforms.

The Linux builds are reproducible: anyone who builds Tor Messenger for Linux should have byte-for-byte identical binaries compared with other builds from a given source. You can build it yourself and let us know if you encounter any problems or cannot match our build. The Windows and OS X builds are not completely reproducible yet but we are

Tor Messenger is a cross-platform chat client that is designed for secure communication - all traffic passes through the Tor network.

The program is based on the Instantbird client developed by the Mozilla community and supports a wide range of transport networks, including Jabber (XMPP), IRC, Google Talk, Twitter, Yahoo, etc., Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging cryptographic technology and also has an easy to use GUI translated into various languages.

Tor Messenger supports the systems familiar to all users, so you can continue to communicate with the contacts you want. Traditionally, these systems are client-server, which means that all your meta-data (in particular, relationships between contacts) can be logged by the server. However, your route to the server will be hidden because the connection is made through the anonymous Tor network.

Specialized Pond and Ricochet systems also solve this problem so their use is encouraged.

Why Instantbird?

A unique feature of Instantbird is that the transport protocols are written in a memory-safe language (JavaScript). The program has a graphical interface and supports many language localizations. Instantbird has its own XUL application - this means that Instantbird can be used in Tor Browser based on Firefox and other applications based on the XULRunner platform. The program has an active and dynamic developer community.

Tor Project specialists announced the termination of the development of the anonymous messenger Tor Messenger. The project was published in 2015, but it never managed to complete the beta testing stage.

Reasons for not using Tor Messenger

The developers met with a number of difficulties that hinder the further implementation of the idea. One of the obstacles was the refusal of Mozilla from the Instantbird messenger, on the basis of which Tor Messenger was implemented. Many of the features of Instantbird were transferred to Thunderbird, but the developers did not have enough resources to rebuild the messenger for another platform.

An important problem has become metadata, which is still stored on third-party servers and, therefore, can be accessed by third parties. Despite all the efforts of the developers, it is not yet possible to find a solution to this issue. Metadata is enough to reveal who the user communicates with and how often. This violates the principle of an anonymous messenger.

The company also faced a lack of resources to implement the idea. Due to the lack of staff, developers could not work on fulfilling the wishes of users. For the same reason, many bug reports were ignored.

Many anonymous messengers are going through hard times. Recall that on March 20, 2018 Roskomnadzor