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Free encrypted chat apps
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: March 27, 2015
Just because you’re paranoid, they say, doesn’t mean that somebody isn’t following you.
And, as we now know, the Internets are completely insecure at every level—even down to the root of laptops.
I haven’t really done chat since AOL acquired ICU (a long time ago), but lots of folks do, or they Skype, and some of those folks don’t want other people peeking in on what they’re chatting about and to whom.
If you may be one of these, keep reading. In the last few moments in time, a number of chat apps with native encryption have come across the board. This is a slight shift from importing encryption software and then using it on top of your text (like Safemonk for Dropbox, etc.).
Natively encrypted means that the privacy (secrecy) is a part of the app, as an all-in-one, so you don’t have to do anything beyond using the app to make sure that your messages are encrypted.
ChatCrypt acts as a chat room that encrypts messages in the browser, so they aren’t readable without the password at any time in the transmission. Text only, but unlimited number of participating partiers allowed.
Tox is relatively new, free, open source, highly encrypted, and encompasses phone, text, and video. Maybe think of as a secure Skype. Messagers are assigned private and public keys, so that the connections are directly between users, and don’t have to pass through another service.
Surespot Encrypted Messenger creates a private chat network that is so unbreakable that it can’t even be recovered if the app is reinstalled or you lose the password, unless you back it up.
Cryptocat is a secure, open source encrypted chat app for the Google Chrome browser. All messages are encrypted in the browser, and so text is not generated and then encrypted by a third party. It includes file sharing, group chatting, Facebook Messenger, among other functions. The person on the other end also has to be using Chrome.
ChatSecure can encrypt and use your existing chat apps, like Google Chat, Facebook Chat, Jabber, Yandex, and many more.
Hope you feel safer!