RetroShare

Started by KK0G, July 22, 2013, 09:17:29 PM

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KK0G

OK all you spooks - you know who you are 8) - what can you tell me about RetroShare? Anyone here using it? A good friend of mine sent me an invite to start using it and it's secure encryption interested me enough to download it (Yes, they have a Mac version!). Discuss, and.............. GO!
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

Quietguy

I'm not a spook (although there was a girl in junior high school who thought I was spooky, which I didn't understand at all) but not long ago I tried Retroshare as a chat system with some friends.  It seemed kind of clunky to me - there are a couple of ways to do chat and we ended up with two isolated groups in one session.  i can't speak to encryption quality but my impression was it seemed oriented towards anonymous file sharing with people you don't know.  That wasn't what we were after so we haven't gone any farther with it.  Maybe our lack of familiarity with it caused our problems.

Wally

RadioRay

#2
For person to person , high anon and distributed (no central server) I have been playing with bitmessage.  You will want to do your own investigating. Basically, you turn it on and it runs in the background.  Computers all over the world distribute the traffic which is also handy for the occasional indigestion on the net. I also helps with your being anon in that you are not easily linkable to any specific message. There is more information on-line.  Oh - and you can do group mailings and multiple subscribers with it - handy for discussions with more than two people.

If you or anyone else on this list would like to give it a try, my 'address' is:   BM-2DAbFSM4HmVhHHCscBCJmxUHV5q4GeqxEc

Here is info about using it with operating systems OTHER than windoze:  https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Compiling_instructions

de RadioRay ..._ ._



"When we cannot do the good we would, we must be ready to do the good we can."  ~ Matthew Henry

KK0G

Thanks Ray, I'll check that one out too.


I connected with my friend using RetroShare last night and explored it a little bit, I have to agree with Quiet, it's somewhat clunky, some of that may be the learning curve of something new. After I finally got the certificates signed and some random button mashing done, I somehow got it to work. We then had an IM chat and in that respect it was no different than any other IM system I've used. The software shows different chat groups, forums, channels, etc, from what I can gather it's intent is to be like a social media type thing with way more security. My guess is it has about a snowballs chance in hell of approaching even a tiny percentage of Facebook's popularity. I'll continue to play with it for at least a while.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

KK0G

Quote from: RadioRay on July 23, 2013, 01:59:55 AM
For person to person , high anon and distributed (no central server) I have been playing with bitmessage.  You will want to do your own investigating. Basically, you turn it on and it runs in the background.  Computers all over the world distribute the traffic which is also handy for the occasional indigestion on the net. I also helps with your being anon in that you are not easily linkable to any specific message. There is more information on-line.  Oh - and you can do group mailings and multiple subscribers with it - handy for discussions with more than two people.

If you or anyone else on this list would like to give it a try, my 'address' is:   BM-2DAbFSM4HmVhHHCscBCJmxUHV5q4GeqxEc

Here is info about using it with operating systems OTHER than windoze:  https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Compiling_instructions

de RadioRay ..._ ._






I checked it out, I'll pass................ that didn't take long 8) . There's no real Mac version but a sort of work around to install the Windoze version to OSX involving lines of code, sorcery, fairy dust and duct tape. I'm fairly computer literate but once I saw that I'm out.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

Quietguy

I'm mostly on a Mac too, plus I have Ubuntu running in Parallels.  I tried to compile both the OS X and Linux versions of Bitmessage and both failed with compile errors.  I didn't bother to troubleshoot, I downloaded the Windows executable to a secondary Windows laptop.  It works well enough, except I can"t find any font controls and my old eyes consider the default font size to be microscopic.  I got tired of squinting and trying to read messages so I select all, copy to clipboard and paste into Notepad to read.

One secure chat program worth checking out is TorChat... it provides end to end encryption and seems to work well.  The only problem with it is the lack of group chat capability - as far as I can tell, it is one to one only.

Wally

RadioRay

For encrypted group chat using OTR. CopyCat works easily. Just give someone the chat name like a password and meet there. EZ

De RadioRay ...-  .-
"When we cannot do the good we would, we must be ready to do the good we can."  ~ Matthew Henry

KK0G

Quote from: RadioRay on July 23, 2013, 05:16:29 PM
For encrypted group chat using OTR. CopyCat works easily. Just give someone the chat name like a password and meet there. EZ

De RadioRay ...-  .-

I assume you mean CryptoCat Ray? I can't find a CopyCat.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

RadioRay

D'oh!  CryptoCat - yes....
"When we cannot do the good we would, we must be ready to do the good we can."  ~ Matthew Henry