Isotoxin - Tox client [discontinued]

[smaragdus]

@webfork
Bleep has its own website- http://www.bleep.pm/ and it has already been reviewed by Softpedia- http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/C ... leep.shtml but I haven't tested it for two reasons- first, Bleep is offered only as online installer and I don't trust such installers, and second, I do not trust anything developed by BitTorrent Inc since this company has a history of bundling third-party ad-ware in their products.

About Odigo:

Odigo was purchased for an estimated $20 million by the Israeli company Comverse Technology in 2002. Comverse leveraged Odigo server software for instant messaging solutions in cell phones. However, since Comverse had no real interest in maintaining a generic IM service, it eventually shut down the free service in 2004, abandoning millions of loyal users.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odigo_Messenger

I really enjoyed Odigo and I was very sad when the service was closed since it was fun to use. While using Odigo I made several good acquaintances and I lost these contacts after the service was shut down. Corporations tend to destroy messengers after they purchase it, AOL did their best to ruin ICQ, which was once extremely popular (at least here in Europe) and Digsby was abandoned after it was acquired (later it was open-sourced but I don't think there will ever be a new version), MySpace once also offered messaging service but it seems to have been discontinued too. I do not want my communication to be a hostage to corporations and their whims since this happened too often in the past- Odigo, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk (I do not want Hangouts) and Skype (since it was acquired by M$ I no longer trust it, I do not like its design and it has turned into ad-ware to boot).

[Midas]

http://subrosa.io/ seems to be currently down...

Corporations tend to destroy messengers after they purchase it, AOL did their best to ruin ICQ, which was once extremely popular (at least here in Europe) and Digsby was abandoned after it was acquired (later it was open-sourced but I don't think there will ever be a new version), MySpace once also offered messaging service but it seems to have been discontinued too. I do not want my communication to be a hostage to corporations and their whims since this happened too often in the past- Odigo, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk (I do not want Hangouts) and Skype (since it was acquired by M$ I no longer trust it, I do not like its design and it has turned into ad-ware to boot).

• In a nutshell, that's really it. You can also add the unrelenting deprecation by all commercial ventures of the grand-father of everything IM, i.e. IRC...

[webfork]

WebRTC (browser-to-browser messaging) seems to be insecure by default.

Sort of. Based on my understanding, if you use the peer-to-peer component then you're giving out details about your IP addres that can be a security risk:

https://powermore.dell.com/technology/o ... ty-issues/
http://www.webrtcworld.com/topics/webrt ... hreats.htm

However if we're talking about serverless, we might not be able to get away from this. Privacy is going to be hard unless you put in [what I understand as] onion routing system where messages get mixed into a group of other peers before getting spit out on the other side. I don't think WebRTC is going to go the onion routing method by default as it means sacrificing speed. That's fine for text messages but they clearly want to expand the feature set (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Discussions/WebRTC), making speed important.

Still, I wouldn't discount it entirely. This is a protocol that is in (open) development and I expect it will get better.

[smaragdus]

Isotoxin version 0.2.375 has been released, changes:

- customizable message font size (ctrl+padplus, ctrl+padminus)
- first run portable option
- check free disk space on updates
- do not create default tox/lan connections on first run, but let user to activate them manually
- better search-history ui
- file send/recv progress bar
- dup message fix
- command line option config
- fixed: autoupdater can't download release file from github.com on some configurations
- lan protocol: support multiple network adapters
- lan protocol: fix file transfer
- page up/page down keys in message view

[smaragdus]

@webfork
Speaking in general I suppose that there is no total security once one connects to the internet. About WebRTC- I am not concerned that much about its possible security flaws- I just don't like in-browser messaging because of practical reasons- a chatting session inside browser can easily be interrupted on browser crash and more- for me it is not very handy- I prefer the chat program to reside minimized in system tray notifying about new messages.

Once I used an "Encrypted Cross-Platform Instant Messaging" program- BitWise:

http://www.bitwiseim.com/ - BitWise web-site
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/C ... Chat.shtml - BitWise at Softpedia
http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... f=4&t=1552 - BitWise has also been mentioned here

It is not portable but when I used it I was pleased with it since it offered several handy options. There haven't been new versions for quite some time but it still runs fine. I wonder why it has always been generally neglected- it is secure and it has no built-in ads (the latter has always been a plague for all commercial messengers).

[smaragdus]

@Midas

In a nutshell, that's really it. You can also add the unrelenting deprecation by all commercial ventures of the grand-father of everything IM, i.e. IRC...

What do you mean exactly? IRC is still popular and useful and many developers rely on IRC channels for support and bug reports (including Tox developers, the Tox channel at freenode was where I submitted the portability issue in qTox and got response). For me IRC is fine for group chat and topic discussions but not that great for private chat. Anyway, I still use IRC daily.

One of the aspects of Isotoxin which I like is that it has a dedicated forum and it is easy to suggest a feature or report a bug directly to the developer (who has also given the option to be contacted directly via e-mail or via Tox). Isotoxin is a project currently maintained by a single developer which in my opinion is not always a disadvantage since the developer knows the code very well and can easily track bugs. More- Isotoxin is offered as stable releases with version history while most of other Tox clients are still in nightly stage of development and there is no change log. Anyway, qTox has an advantage too- it is multi-platform and offers video chat which hasn't been implemented in Isotoxin yet. I haven't tested uTox because it is not portable and I think that when it comes to serverless messaging portability is not just an advantage but a must.

[webfork]

I forgot to include this in my last reply ...

I do not trust anything developed by BitTorrent Inc since this company has a history of bundling third-party ad-ware in their products.

I'm less wary of the 3rd party adware and more concerned about:

1. Their namesake protocol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorren ... encryption) using weak encryption (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RC4).  As far as I can tell, there's no effort in place to update that as the original author was opposed to encryption in the first place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorren ... #Criticism .  Although I understand his initial reasoning, BitTorrent is much bigger than just distribution and there's still been no move to build in solid security.
2. How companies have to comply with court orders (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... d-data-law) or face legal and political repercussions.  If Apple or Microsoft ever really pushed back in a dramatic way against state actors, they'd likely find a hostile landscape.  As such, it seems unlikely any one company can drive a reasonably secure, fully peer-to-peer service like this.

[smaragdus]

Isotoxin version 0.2.376 has been released, changes:

- typing notifications in contact list
- fill message list gradually to avoid freeze
- rare crash fix
- other small improvements

- What does it mean: fill message list gradually? If you set "Load whole history" option, you can feel the percetible freeze of UI, when you select contact with lot of messages. Filling message list gradually makes the problem inpercetible.

[smaragdus]

Isotoxin version 0.3.396 released, changes:

current changes
- utilize all cpu cores for video encoding/decoding
- ipv6 option
- multimonitor support: Isotoxin window automatically moved to main display if second second display turned off
- tox protocol extension: client caps (message chaining, message create time, video view size ajustment, time sync and other)
- Isotoxin removes bbcodes from username and userstatus for clients that not support them
- accept call with video
- double click on caption - maximize or restore window
- UI cosmetic changes
- support video under windows XP

prerelease changes
- basic video support (some features not yet ready)
- new a/v tox protocol support
- avatar creation dialog improoved: camera supported
- show call duration
- desktop grab
- fix message creation time (broken in previous version)
- protocol extension: video view size. Video sender scales frames before send
- bug fix: smiles in message editbox

All releases and full change-log:
https://github.com/Rotkaermota/Isotoxin/releases

[smaragdus]

Isotoxin version 0.3.401 released, changes:

- contact details (right click on contact -> contact properties)
- optimizations: video rgb->i420 conversion about 5x faster, text rendering about 8x faster
- new sounds: contact online/offline, file received, incoming message to current conversation
- now messages are sorted according to received time, not create time
- avatar creation dialog was crashed on drag-n-drop non image
- fixed: double enter send error
- isotoxin now stores dnsname of tox contact in database, so you can see it in contact details
- search bar handles escape key - clear
- lan protocol fix: 100% cpu load on change ip of network adapter

The developer of Isotoxin has started a blog dedicated to Isotoxin:
http://isotoxin-dev.livejournal.com/
but it is in Russian.

[smaragdus]

Isotoxin version 0.3.403 has been released, changes:

- image crop-before-send dialog
- image can be pased into message input control
- contact comments
- fix: space key crashes isotoxin after avatar creation dialog closed
- separate folder for downloaded images (can be customized in settings)
- avatar automatically saved into folder for images
- UI cosmetic update

[smaragdus]

Isotoxin version 0.3.407 released, changes:

- password encrypted profile (please, backup your profile before encrypt)
- optimized UI (faster opening conversation with huge amount of messages)
- optimized sqlite transactions (faster metacontact attach/detach)
- add-contact-dialog now changes name on change protocol
- metacontact detach bug - some outgoing messages remain in old message log
- send message to last active subcontact of metacontact (if more then one online)
- fix: tox protocol crash on incorrect proxy address

To encrypt profile, open Settings -> Profile -> General and set checkbox Encrypted profile. You will be prompted for password.

The latest version was uploaded at Isotoxin download page at 2016.01.01 at 00:22- it seems that some developers are totally devoted to their open source projects.

[smaragdus]

Isotoxin version 0.3.408 released, changes:

just some bugs fixed:
- unable to create new profile (critical)
- incorrect update of list of sounds in settings
- menu items visual bug

[smaragdus]

Isotoxin version 0.3.414 has been released, changes:

- contacts tags (press ctrl+t to show/hide filter)
- QR codes (you can generate QR code from message or ID of contact)
- network panel UI changed
- sort contacts by last activity
- option: keep Away status on user activity
- better compatibility with Wine on linux

[smaragdus]

Isotoxin was reviewed at Softpedia by Vladimir Ciobica and received rating of 3.5/5 which I consider to be too low since qTox got 4.5/5- the only advantage of qTox I can think of (in fact I first started using qTox) is that it is cross-platform, while Isotoxin has the unique feature of exporting chat history to TXT/HTML files.