Taste the bite of byte

One of the most popular ways to communicate in the modern wired world is Instant Messaging (or IM). This allows you to quickly and conveniently monitor whether your friends are online, send them messages and engage them in chats. Since many people now have a PC on their desktop, IM provides a cheap and easy way to stay in touch.

Having said that - none of the current popular products out there make a serious attempt to protect your communications. As Phil Zimmerman says, you send your regular mail in a sealed envelope - why don't you do the same with your electronic communications?

iGo Incognito is an Instant Messaging (IM) system similar to ICQ, AOL and others in that you can see whether people are online, send messages, have private chats and join discussion forums.

However, this is where the similarity ends - because iGo Incognito provides several important unique facilities - the foremost amongst them being Security/Safety/Privacy.

iGo Incognito is the only IM facility built from the ground up on cryptographically strong security. No other IM product can provide end-to-end security - i.e. messages are encrypted at your machine and decrypted at your friends machine and cannot be decrypted in the middle.

Most IM products either don't encrypt traffic, or if they do they encrypt it is only for transmission to the server where it is decrypted. That still means that your messages can be read at the server. Furthermore, with some products they can be read on your machine because they are stored in clear text.

iGo Incognito encrypts messages using public key technology. Messages cannot be decrypted during transmission, they cannot be decrypted at the server, they can only be decrypted by the recipient. No one can intercept or view them - just the recipient.

This remarkable claim also applies to private chats - only people actually invited to a private chat can join, and only after joining can they see any of the messages.

Do I need this level of encryption?

The US government has recently forced all ISPs to install hardware to permit the easy monitoring of internet traffic, and required all telecommunications companies to make it possible to monitor a huge number of phone calls at any one time. Furthermore, thanks to legislation being enacted throughout the US, safeguards against the abuse of monitoring powers are disappearing. It is no longer just the FBI who are being given the power to snoop - local governments want it too.

iGo Incognito was founded on the premise that protecting your information is important. A combination of industry standard encryption techniques make it impossible for anyone to intrude on your privacy, even us! (read why). We do all that, and provide an excellent IM client as well.

iGo Incognito has also been built to allow richer forms of communication - permitting full rich text messaging, private chats, open discussion forums and offline messaging.

Features include:

• Encrypting all traffic between you and the server using AES and 128 bit keys.
• Encrypt all messages from you to your friends using PKE - only your friends can read them.
• Messages are rich - you can express yourself in color, fonts, styles and formatting.
• Secure voice messaging - click on a friend, speak and send.
• Secure file transmission - including support for drag and drop from the explorer.
• Simple to use.
• You can add people to an ignore list - you will never hear from them again.
• You can hide your account - no one will be able to find you if you don't want them to. Friends must know your ID in advance and ask for your permission before they can send you messages.
• If you permit it, people can search for you by ID and (again, if you allow it) by name.
• People can send you messages when you are offline, they are held at the server and forwarded to you when you return.
• Friends can see when you are Offline, Online, Away, DND (Do Not Disturb).
• You can create private chat sessions and invite other people. Chat membership and all traffic is protected from prying eyes - only group members can see the text of the chat session.
• The chat moderator can add or remove people from the chat. Chat members don't need to be friends with each other.
• From within a chat, you can send private messages and create private side-chats.
• You can create open discussion forums that anyone can join. As always, all traffic is encrypted. However because the forums are open you cannot stop people joining.