Alternative IM/VoIP solution?

[2026 editor's note: WhatsApp would add E2EE in 2016, but by that point, they had already been acquired by Facebook. The average Joe sure did switch to it, though. And that's the story of how we got Chat Control...]

June 10, 2013 Reading time: 1 minute

2026 editor's note: this post was written over a decade ago, and it is unlikely to accurately depict my current opinions, level of knowledge... and English proficiency. Read about this website for details.

If anyone knows of a instant messaging and VoIP solution that’s free, privacy friendly (end-to-end encryption, preferably) and, most importantly, easy to get the “average Joe” to switch to (i.e. my non-technical friends), please let me know. Bonus points if it has interoperability to work with other systems (at the eventual cost of losing some of the privacy) – that way, I wouldn’t need to get all my friends to switch.

(Of course, Google Talks/Hangouts, Skype and anything Facebook-related is out of the equation.)

Another thing I’m looking forward to is having my computers (Linux and Windows), old Windows Mobile phones and my Android phone and tablet synchronized (contacts, calendar, email) through the Internet without Google’s help, but I realize this is even harder find than the IM solution I specified above.