Speek 1.6 messenger available, using Tor network for privacy

Decentralized messaging program Speek 1.6 has been released to provide maximum privacy, anonymity and tracking protection. Speek's user IDs are based on public keys and are not tied to phone numbers or email addresses. The infrastructure does not use centralized servers and all data exchange is carried out only in P2P mode through the establishment of direct connections between users over the Tor network. The project code is written in C++ using the Qt toolkit and distributed under the BSD license. Assemblies are generated for Linux (AppImage), macOS and Windows.

The main idea of ​​the project is to use the Tor anonymous network for data exchange. For each user, a separate Tor hidden service is created, the identifier of which is used to determine the subscriber (the user's login matches the onion address of the hidden service). The use of Tor allows you to ensure the anonymity of the user and protect his IP address and location from disclosure. To protect correspondence from interception and analysis, in case of gaining access to the user's system, public key encryption is used and all messages are deleted after the session ends, without leaving traces as after normal live communication. Metadata and message texts are not stored on disk.

Before the start of communication, the keys are exchanged and the user and his public key are added to the address book. You can add another user only after sending a communication request and obtaining consent to receive messages. After launch, the application creates its hidden service and checks for hidden services for users from the address book, if their hidden services are running, users are marked as online. Sharing files is supported, the transfer of which also uses encryption and P2P mode.

Changes in the new release:

• Added a separate dialogue with a list of all received communication requests, which replaced the confirmation dialog that popped up upon receipt of each request.
• Added notification of incoming communication requests in the notification area on the system tray.
• A new dark blue theme has been added and applied by default.
• Provided the ability to connect your own themes.
• Implemented the ability to change the size of the area with the address book.
• Added tooltips.
• Improved input validation.
• Various crayon improvements have been made to the interface.

Source: opennet.ru