[OTR-users] new user, comments on authentication

[Paul Wouters]

On Wed, 28 Nov 2007, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> Bonus prize if you can invent a web-of-trust authentication system
> that uses common members on the users buddy-list without disclosing a
> users social network to the whole world... ;)

And eternal fame if you can build in a reputation system too (user X always
clicks "verified" even if they didn't, but user H will always call before
verifying)

Paul

> To really get there OTR needs to be included and enabled in quality
> clients *by* *default*.  Half my AIM contacts have OTR ... but this is
> only because 1/4 are Mac users with a client that has OTR by default.
>  Asking windows contacts to switch clients is a tall request, but
> pidgin has a lot of advantages over the default stuff. ... but to also
> ask them to install OTR, oy.. thats starting to ask too much in some
> cases.

I think we are seeing a clear momentum grow. Without having hard
statistics, it seems that OTR is being used much more then other IM
encryptions. And broken alternatives like Scatterchat have died out.
A lot of opensource IM clients are using it, the closed source ones
will follow I think (in so far they have a large market left at all)

Paul