BitTorrent experimenting with a serverless chat client that assures security

Worried about who could be peeping in on your conversations while you talk with your buddy on IM? BitTorrent may have a solution for you. The peer-to-peer file

Nishtha Kanal|Oct 01, 2013, 13:22:31 IST

Worried about who could be peeping in on your conversations while you talk with your buddy on IM? BitTorrent may have a solution for you. The peer-to-peer file sharing service has been experimenting with a serverless messaging application that it thinks could be the response to all the snooping by authorities.

In a blog post talking abut this BitTorrent Chat, Catherine Meek, Director of Product Management at BitTorrent writes, “This year alone, more than 6 million people have been impacted by data breaches. The right to own your own conversations online: it’s not a given. It should be.”

Keep away Nosey-Parkers

With this simple thought in mind, BitTorrent started working on finding a solution for conversation security in its Labs. The goal of coming up with BitTorrent Chat was that the service wanted users’ messages to be private, secure and free. Quite like how torrents work, BitTorrent Chat will work on the concept of decentralised technology to let users IM each other.

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Internet privacy has suddenly become the most important thing about being online these days. In the aftermath of revelations about NSA’s spying activities, encryption has become of utmost importance and services that assure security are finding favour with more and more people.

While not a lot of detail is available about BitTorrent Chat yet, it is supposed to be in the pre-Alpha experiment stage right now. It isn’t going to be available publicly – if at all – for quite a while. If you do wish to be a part of the test stage, you can head on to BitTorrent’s Labs page and sign up for the secure IM system. All BitTorrent is looking for in return is feedback on how to make its product better.

By Nishtha Kanal

Intrigued by all things social, Nishtha will invariably tweet about you. When not tweeting or writing about the next viral video, you will hear her proclaiming her love to Metallica, James Hetfield, Opeth, Akerfeldt and all bands that go 'growl'. She also obsesses about ACP Pradyuman and South Park and you will always find her moving around with a book. Her focus is on all the happening stuff in the tech domain, and she won't hesitate to take a shot at some of the oddball devices that make their way to our labs.