[TriLUG] Local instant messenger app

[Aaron S. Joyner]

James Brigman wrote:

>Joel - your article reference is excellent. The resulting thread
>mentions one important item that I'd forgotten about: encryption! GAIM
>has an encryption module:
>
>http://gaim-encryption.sourceforge.net/
>  
>

Speaking of encryption, the Jabber standard (and now the jabberd1.4 
server) supports SSL for all Client to Server and Server to Server 
connections.  For most people, for most conversations, that's going to 
be quite sufficient.  If you're truly paranoid (and usually that's a 
good thing), quite a few of the clients, including my personal favorite 
Psi, support PGP encrypted messages.  If you are speaking with a user of 
an appropriately-intelligent client, all of your messages can be sent 
encrypted with your and the recipient's PGP public keys, and can be 
stored that way on disk in the history, etc.  This nicely leverages the 
existing infrastructure of PGP for high-security encryption, and the web 
of trust for authentication.  Seems like the perfect blend of 
technologies to me.  :)

Aaron S. Joyner