I use email fairly extensively for my public communication but I use XMPP (with suitable end-to-end encryption) for my private, personal communication. And I use my own XMPP server to facilitate this. But as I have mentioned in previous posts my family and many of my friends insist on using proprietary variants of this open standard (facebook, whatsapp etc. ad nauseam). I was thus amused to note that I am not alone in having difficulty in keeping track of “which of my contacts use which chat systems“.
(My thanks, as ever, to Randall Munroe over at XKCD.)
I must find a client which can handle all of my messaging systems. Better yet, I’d like one which worked, and seamlessly synchronised, across my mobile devices and my linux desktop. Even better again, such a client should offer simple (i.e. easy to use) e-to-e crypto and use an open server platform which I can manage myself.
Proprietary systems suck.