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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 20 2014, @03:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the wait-for-Government-makes-it-illegal-headline dept.

IM services start to block unencrypted chats. XMPP upgrade is rolling out now.

A host of instant messaging services will begin refusing unencrypted connections from today under a pledge to harden the extensible messaging and presence protocol (XMPP). Developers pledged in 2012 to begin testing client-to-server and server-to-server encryption for XMPP as of January in a move heralded as an initial step to secure the communications protocol against criminals and government spies. The XMPP Standard Foundation initiative covered 70 providers but could not be enforced. Peter Saint-Andre, the technologist behind the initiative, welcomed the go live date. "Today, a large number of services on the public XMPP network permanently turned on mandatory encryption for client-to-server and server-to-server connections," Saiont-Andre said. "This is the first step toward making the XMPP network more secure for all users."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/20/im_upgrade _locks_out_lazy_eavesdroppers/

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stpeter/manifest o/master/manifesto.txt

Users can check the security of xmpp services here. https://xmpp.net/

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday May 20 2014, @03:44PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 20 2014, @03:44PM (#45634)

    "provides a false sense of security"

    Unfortunately that's exactly what the providers are looking for.

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