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.
The messages you send do not have digital signatures that are checkable by a third party. Anyone can forge messages after a conversation to make them look like they came from you. However, during a conversation, your correspondent is assured the messages are authentic and unmodified.
<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>
