Pseudonymous Instant Messaging and Chat Using Tails

Your Tails system includes the multi-protocol chat client Pidgin, through which you can use a variety of chat systems. Many of the popular chat platforms that Pidgin can talk over, from AOL to Google Talk, do not permit creation of accounts through Tor exit nodes, so you cannot establish strong pseudonyms. But Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is completely open to pseudonymous participation through Tor; Pidgin will autogenerate a new pseudonymous IRC account for you each time you start it. You can also create an XMPP protocol account for use on the Jabber network through many public XMPP servers that allow registration from Tor exit nodes. One such is im.koderoot.net.

Open Pidgin and add any accounts you want to use during this session. Remember that if you use Facebook XMPP or Google Talk and provide a known userid you are cloaking your physical location but leaking the identity of everything done during that session running Tails. Either read up on Tor circuits and how to manage them or reboot Tails to restore identity-hiding after using Pidgin to communicate through the data-mining platforms.

-- EbenMoglen - 04 May 2016

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