Tor_and_The_Dark_Net_Remain_Anonymous_and_Evade_NSA_Spying_by_James

TOR CHAT
By now you should know that any type of messaging system is likely compromised or
storing your data for an unknown period of time, and if you ever become a person of
interest can be looked back upon for 5+ years.
This means things like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Skype Messaging, Facebook
Instant/Private Message, Text Messages, and other forms of communication are all likely
being monitored to some degree, at the very least logging the meta data. But you should
always treat everything as if those who are monitoring it can read the content of the email
as well.
We have talked about communicating with PGP, we have talked about using TOR and
hidden services, and we have talked about good practices of OpSec. But some of us want
to be able to instant message somebody else. The good news is; you can do this with
something called TorChat.
TorChat is a decentralized anonymous instant messenger that uses Tor hidden services as
its underlying Network, in other words it communicates over the Tor network through the
.onion URL protocol. This provides end to end encryption that we talked about in
previous posts. It provides cryptographically secure text messaging and file transfers for
business dealings, and confidential communication between two people. The best news, is
that you can use TorChat on your Windows, Linux and your smart phones. A French
developer released a version for MAC users, but it still in beta and should be used at your
own risk. You can get TorChat for the iPhone in the Apple store, you can get TorChat in
the Android Market as well, so you can even use it as a means of text messaging
somebody else who also has TorChat.
In TorChat, every user has a unique alphanumeric ID consisting of 16 characters. This ID
will be randomly created by Tor when the client is started the first time, it is basically the
.onion address of a hidden service. TorChat clients communicate with each other by using
Tor to contact the other’s hidden service. For example, the first time you open TorChat
your computer might generate d0dj309jfj94jfgf.onion and from here on out,
d0dj309jfj94jfgf will be your TorChat ID that you give out to people that you want to be
able to message you. Here is the home page of TorChat.
https://github.com/prof7bit/TorChat
http://www.sourcemac.com/?page=torchat – MAC users
Unfortunately, at this time, TorChat does not run properly in Tails, so you will either need
to run it on your Windows, Linux or MAC system. It is pretty straight forward, download
it, unpack it and run it and everything else should happen automatically for you. Once the
avatar beside your TorChat ID turns green, you are online and same with your contacts.
You can add contains by right clicking and choosing Add Contact and just enter their
TorChat ID.
At this time there is some people debate as to whether or not TorChat is completely safe,
and I would say that TorChat is about as safe as Tor is, just make sure you practice the