Re: lack of encryption in instant messengers

Pubkeybreaker wrote:
Before IM systems get such a capability, there needs to be a financial
incentive for those providing IM software to add an encryption
capability.
Such incentive comes from customer demand. No demand --> no financial
incentive --> no capability.

That's a bit naive but not entirely inaccurate.

Crypto is a bit special in that people REALLY don't get the benefits of
it. Heck, even compression is foreign. The only reason it's
widespread is because the implementors realized you NEED it to make the
program work.

I can just as easily tell you my bank details without encryption, but I
can't send you streaming audio in realtime without compression, etc...
So even for the home user who isn't financially vested in privacy, they
still won't use it because they don't realize they may need it.

And besides, a lot of people work on things for free [cough, the OSS
scene, cough]. In fact several IM protocols support encryption
already.

Why MSN, YM and AIM don't support it? You're right lack of customer
demand. But that's really no excuse. It's just a cop-out.

Tom

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