For several years, a number of governments around the world have worked tirelessly to monitor or otherwise regulate how their citizens interact on the internet. Due to services such as Tor and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), this task has become difficult and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. As long as there are people willing to make utilities that help people become anonymous on the web, there will always be a way around the regulations and blocks put in place by centralized administrations.
Onion routing (via Tor) has been one of the most popular ways to accomplish this. At the end of October, the developers released a new service that runs on Tor and allows anonymous chat/messaging. Here is a summary of what you need to know about this service.
If you're not sure how Tor works, I've already written an article here on MTE that explains it. In addition to Tor, the messaging system will work by first connecting via the OR protocol and then adding the protocol of your chat service of choice as an additional layer. You can connect to Facebook, Jabber, IRC, Google Talk, Twitter, Yahoo, and many other services that allow private conversations using this method. The purpose of Tor Messenger is to enable conversations between people in countries where such a protocol is blocked for various reasons. You will always be able to find a Tor Relay in a country where these services are not blocked, allowing you to both chat and hide your location with end-to-end encryption.
Of course, if you're redeeming the key through the same email system you intend to use it in, you've technically gone through all that effort for nothing. Someone can easily grab your key and decode the whole conversation anyway. My suggestion is to make a phone call, text (less secure) or meet in person to exchange the key with the person you intend to speak to. Use a different key for each person you talk to to eliminate any possibility of sabotage if the conversation is extremely sensitive.
As long as you follow these best practices, you can keep your head under water if privacy is so important to you in these special times.
What do you think? Is Tor Messenger taking paranoia too far or providing an essential service? Tell us in the comments!
