Tor ‘sunsets’ secure Messenger that never exited beta

The Tor project will “sunset” its Messenger, a project launched in 2015 in the hope of improving security for social networks’ messaging services. At launch, Tor advanced Messenger as a replacement for multi-protocol chat clients like Adium and Pidgin. The project’s plan was to route messages sent using XMPP, IRC, Google Talk …

[Pascal Monett]

"perhaps such cross-platform tools just aren’t needed any more"

I beg to differ. Cross-platform mail security is indispensable, or, at least the ability to send mail securely from any platform to any other platform is.

One must not consider that, because Facebook users might mostly write to other Facebook users, it is not important for them to be able to write and/or receive secure mail to/from other platforms.

Because the alternative is that, to send secure mail, you'd have to be on FB and send to a user on FB.

And having Zuckerberg in charge of secure mail just cannot be acceptable.

[Roml0k]

Security is necessary but not sufficient

> “Why bother?” seems apt given the good range of secure messaging tools on offer these days.

If security were all Tor cared about, then the Tor browser project would have been shut down when HTTPS became mainstream.

No, the goal of the Tor project is to provide anonymity for the user. This is a much harder problem than just implementing end-to-end encryption on top of a centralised service. It requires not sharing, or leaking, any metadata to any party not directly involved a communication.

[no_handle_yet]

Re: Security is necessary but not sufficient

Exactly right. This wasn't about stopping the NSA/FBI/Council parking enforcement team reading the contents of a message. It was about stopping the NSA/FBI/Council parking enforcement team knowing where the message originated. That is why the inability to stop metadata leaks was the killer.

Have an up vote.

[BebopWeBop]

Re: Security is necessary but not sufficient

I also handed over a deserved update but <pedantic> Anonymity is a key part of security - traceability is as useful as a decryption of the message

[Anonymous Coward]

Decentralized infra for chat is essential to any future with some privacy. Oppressed groups need to stay in touch, without the requirement for a central server that any government can either block access to (everything in Silicon Valley) or shut down or take control of (local and quasi government services).

[I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects]

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