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Comment by 18pfsmt | Hacker News Reader

I would suggest using an XMPP-based service, and then using a client like Pidgin with an Off The Record (OTR) plugin.

It's kind of sad that most IM clients do not provide OTR out of the box, I would use it all the time but unfortunately most people do not use pidgin or Adium.

OTR has nothing to do with encryption. All it says is "pretty please don't save my conversation."

The only way for fully encrypted conversations is to use a plugin that encrypts messages themselves, or use an ecrypted P2P IM network.

OTR is all about encryption, it is a plugin which encrypts the messages themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging

I think the GP was thinking of Google Talk's feature to disable logging, which is also called 'off the record'.

He was not: "using a client like Pidgin with an Off The Record (OTR) plugin."

What are you on about? OTR is pretty robust encryption.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging

http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ the OTR protocol mentioned in the parent does provide encryption.

There seems to be some confusion about the XMPP definition of OTR as defined in XEP-0136 which does not mention encryption (http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0136.html#otr) and the colloquial use of OTR which apparently means "encrypted IM."

AFAIK there is no defined standard or agreed-upon XMPP extension for the latter. I should have clarified this in the original comment.

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