Tor’s new Messenger app promises privacy over familiar networks

Tor has released a beta version of its cross-platform chat program, which will help you keep your conversations away from prying eyes.

The Tor team has been working on this product for quite a few time now, with three alpha versions distributed for internal testing via the project’s mailing lists.

The result is that anyone can download the software and in seconds start sending messages to their pre-existing contacts that are not only strongly encrypted, but tunneled through Tor’s maze of volunteer computers around the world to hide the sender’s IP address. XUL is also a technology deployed with Firefox, the browser on which the Tor Browser has been built upon.

Note: A bug in the Windows version of Tor Messenger is preventing the app from starting up correctly.

The Tor Project is a non-profit organization that runs the Tor network, a system of routers and servers created to make it harder to track online users and easier to disguise Internet activity from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis.

The biggest of them is the classic client-server communications model which allows Tor Messenger servers to store chat metadata.

In a blog post announcing the program, Tor said it considered using Pidgin and Adam Langley’s xmpp-client as the foundation before ultimately deciding on Instantbird due to the fact that its transport protocols are written in JavaScript (a memory-safe language).

Below is a quick screenshot tour courtesy of Softpedia’s Mac department.

This simply means that Tor Messenger can be used to chat with the very same contact’s you have, without forcing them to use a few new but more secure service.

Tor is expecting that the client’s easy-to-use chat interface will accomplish two goals: keeping all of its anti-surveillance protocols out of sight; and removing the complexity usually associated with setting up and using anonymizing services. “Tor gives us location anonymity”.

Tor Messenger isn’t ideal, and its developers admit as much. Now, the company says its will be fixing bugs and releasing updates in step with Mozilla’s Extended Support Release (ESR) cycle.