Instant Messaging
Encrypt it with Cryptocat
Go to crypto.cat
Install it.
Let your guest practice it with you and other guests.
When you exchange instant messages with your friends on Facebook, Google Chat, or
other companies’ services, many strangers can read them and record them.
Employees of Facebook, Google, and the other companies can. So can the people
who administer all the routers--or who have gotten access to the routers--between your
computer and the company’s computer. Sometimes, you are happy to write your
message on a postcard that hundreds of strangers can read. At other times, you want
to put your message in a sealed envelope.
Encryption is a sealed envelope.
Cryptocat is a non-profit service that lets you exchange encrypted instant messages
with your friends. The developer, Nadim Kobeissi, is a young Canadian-Lebanese man
who is trying to create safe ways to communicate for people who live under dangerous
regimes that practice surveillance and censorship.
Strengths: Simple, because it works in your Web browser
Convenient, because many friends can exchange messages in the
same
chat room.
Trustworthy, because the software is open to all to inspect
Moreover, the encryption takes place on your computer and your friends’
computers. The central exchange computer can’t read your
messages.
Also, anyone--even you--can start a central exchange computer. You
needn’t trust any strangers at all
Anonymizable because you can use it with the Tor Browser. That way,
the
central exchange computer doesn’t know who is exchanging
messages with
whom.
Uses strong encryption: Off-the-Record Messaging
Weakness: Nothing that we know about yet