For chatting and instant messaging, Tails includes the *[Pidgin Instant Messenger](https://pidgin.im/)*.

You can use *Pidgin* to connect to [[!wikipedia Internet_Relay_Chat desc="IRC"]] or [[!wikipedia XMPP]] (also known as Jabber) servers. You can have several accounts connected at the same time.

<p>OTR is deactivated by default, and your conversations are
not private.</p>

<p>File transfers are not encrypted by OTR. OTR only encrypts conversations.</p>

<p>To store your OTR keys and <i>Pidgin</i> settings across different Tails sessions,
you can turn on the [[Pidgin Internet Messenger|persistent_storage/configure#pidgin]]
feature of the Persistent Storage.</p>

<p>In a private OTR conversation over IRC, a message sent using the
<code>/me</code> command is not encrypted. The person receiving
the message is notified by a warning.</p>

Some IRC servers block connections from Tor because Tor is sometimes used to send spam.