Instant Messaging

I was asked after my last post what I used for instant messaging. The answer is kinda interesting in my opinion.

As some of you know I am a privacy advocate, but try to also balance that with ease of use and ease of integrating with other people.

I run my own XMPP server which I share with a number of collegues. This is running of Prosody an open source XMPP server. We use the MUC module to host a number of conference rooms where our bots and other notifications are sent.

In addition to this I also use Skype, not because I trust Microsoft to not sell my contact info out to the NSA, but because it reduces the friction of contacting me for a number of people. Forcing them to use my private XMPP server (even through federation) is too big a hurdle for them to jump.