The Tor Project has officially launched the first beta version of Tor Messenger, an open source and Encrypted instant messaging client that works on top of the Tor network.

Tor Messenger is designed by keeping both simplicity and privacy in mind.

The team claimed that their app encrypts the content of instant messages as well as makes it very difficult for snoopers and eavesdroppers to identify the user sending them.

Tor Messenger integrates the "Off-the-Record" (OTR) to encrypt messages and then routes them over Tor network in the same manner as the Tor Browser does for the web.

The app is built on Mozilla's instant messaging client Instantbird and works a lot like Adium, another popular instant messaging client.

Tor Messenger can be run on versions of Windows, Mac, or Linux PC. To do so, you simply have to follow these simple steps:

-Download Tor
-Drag the app to your Applications folder
-Run and launch the app (currently in beta)
-Log in to your preferred instant messaging service or services
-Once logged in, you will be able to chat securely and anonymously without any further extra hacking.


Tor Messenger client currently supports:

-Jabber (XMPP) chat protocol
-IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
-Facebook Chat
-Google Talk
-Twitter
-Yahoo!
-Desktop clients like Adium for Mac and Pidgin for Windows

The goal of the team is both to make Tor more accessible as well as to create a secure chat client.


Tor Messenger: Future Integration

-The Tor team's future Tor Messenger versions will include support for:
-Sandboxing (for increased security)
-Automatic updates
-OTR for Twitter DMs
-Better support for Tor's protocols
-Secure multi-party communication (np1sec)
-Encrypted File Transfers

I setup a tor bridge-relay two days ago, had thought the mozilla IM client was something to tell the grandkids about, now am greeted with this. There is also https://ricochet.im/ which is another iM over tor app, will have to compare them