Bitcoin Forum

Here is a short list of IM clients which are (or promise to be) secure.
Feel free to add others, discuss and vote for your favorite one.

Bitmessage
URL: https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page
Clients: Windows / Mac / Linux
Open Source: Yes ( https://github.com/Bitmessage/PyBitmessage )
Notes: Currently has problems with spam/abuse/dos ( https://bitmessage.org/forum/index.php?topic=4136.0 )

Bleep
URL: http://labs.bittorrent.com/bleep/
Clients: Windows / Mac / Android
Open Source: No
Notes: The company behind the closed source is US based
Notes: EULA grants BitTorrent Inc very broad rights to collect (and share) data about users

Invisible.im
URL: http://invisible.im/
Clients: None yet
Open Source: No / Not yet
Notes: Currently re-basing to Ricochet

Ricochet
URL: https://ricochet.im/
Clients: Windows / Mac ( https://ricochet.im/releases/latest/ )
Open Source: Yes ( https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet/ )
Notes: requires OpenGL 2

TorChat
URL: https://github.com/prof7bit/TorChat
Clients: Windows / Linux / Pidgin plugins
Open Source: Yes ( https://github.com/prof7bit/TorChat )
Notes: Dead? Last commit was back in January

Tox
URL: https://tox.im/
Clients: Windows / Mac / Linux / Android / etc ( https://wiki.tox.im/Binaries )
Open Source: Yes ( https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore )
Notes: -

bitmessage is the best so far but the client goes unresponsive sometimes. I'll give Ricochet a try thanks for the list.

Isn't that Bleep? Both come from BitTorrent Inc.
Bleep would be the last of my choices.
A thread at their forums about open-sourcing Bleep gets pretty much shot down with ridiculous arguments (like closed source is better because security by obscurity).
Their security approach boils down to "trust us".
Somewhat funny because only thanks to the open and freely accessible protocol specs, Bittorrent became so popular and widely ported.
http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/30924-open-source/

Don't really understand this thread..
but I use "PGP SMS".... to send/rec encrypted SMS to people... its for android but i think iphone has a version of it to.

Helpful list, bookmarked.

There also exists an OTR plugin for various messengers: https://otr.cypherpunks.ca

I use Bitmessage, and always encourage my contacts to do the same.

They've got a great service.

Bitmessage + GPG = best

I wonder why the Ricochet developer has chosen to use tor again, i have strong doubts about its security, add to that it doesn't seem to do anything different than the already existing torchat.
The I2P protocol would have been a much more interesting and secure choice imho.

I'm impressed by the Tox effort, going to keep a close eye on that one, open source, multi-platform, very good initiative!

Bitmessage is great, but slow as #@$! and not available for mobile devices.

Bleep is out of the question, closed source proprietary spy junk.

I like Bitmessage hope they can sort the problems.

I like bitmessage. But most of my contacts does not use it.

If you want to use I2P-Messenger, you need to have I2P installed (and last time I checked, that required a JRE too). Tor appears to be easier to implement. As far as I understand, I2P connects users directly through the network, while for a Ricochet chat, both sides work out a random rendevous point in the Tor network. That means there are 6 hops between both users.

Tox looks good indeed. You can add another layer by tunneling it through Tor too and maybe a future release implements it directly.

Secure messaging has to be as simple as possible because your everyday WhatsApp/Snapchat user does not want to invest time into security.