I see a lot of ppl here depending on ICQ and mail for their communication. But does no one stops for a second and thinks that it’s all cleartext? Also not to mention that the use of safe-mail.net (a company in Israel) doesn’t make things better.

Without making things too difficult here are a few ways to secure communication:

MAIL:

use PGP protocol (don’t confuse it with PGP program). There is an open-source gpg tool available called gpg (GnuPG). Educate yourself about the use of public/secret-key communication. Both parties must use it. It is not recommended to use the PGP program since there is reason to suspect there is a backdoor in it, at least the international version.

ICQ:

Use a client like Gaim (which supports MSN/yahoo/jabber/ICQ and so on) and the OTR plugin which will encrypt your session every time you talk to someone. The other party must also use the OTR plugin. Even if one session would ever be broken then it cannot be tied to other sessions since each session uses a new key pair. Trillian has a dial-home option, it cannot be disabled and is a closed source.

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pgp(gpg:

tutorial/info:

Just use google for more info, those who care about their freedom might find it worth the bother 😉

(c.) grendel