Google Talk and "off the record"

Change · Post by **Change** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 9:04 pm

Will you start supporting the new "off the record" function for Gtalk, so we can prevent logs from showing up on Google? Or at least notify us when the user we're talking to has enabled "off the record"?

Post by **The_Tick** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:14 pm

Adium ships with otr for all jabber accounts. This includes Google Talk.

I don't get why you would log, but want to encrypt conversations.

Change · Post by **Change** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:33 pm

I'm not sure why you pulled encryption into this as it wasn't about that..

Are you saying Adium will notify a user when the other chat participant enables "off the record" in Gtalk? I thought I tested that, but I will test again then.

standardmess · Post by **standardmess** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:34 pm

Tick...I think you have misunderstood him. He's not talking about OTR encryption. GMAIL now keeps an optional log of all GTALK chats on your GMAIL account. However, GTALK now has a feature called "off the record" that simply keeps the chat from being logged. Neither person's GMAIL account can log the chat if it is "off the record" and the receiver of such a chat is notified when such a chat occurs. So, I think "off the record" is a particular function of GMAIL that is unique to that system. I'm not necessarily saying you guys are required to put it into Adium, but I just hoped I might be able to help clarify the issue.

At least that's what I think is going on here. I could just be confused and wrong, too.

Post by **The_Tick** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:41 pm

Change wrote:I'm not sure why you pulled encryption into this as it wasn't about that..

Change wrote:so we can prevent logs from showing up

Ya, that would be why I brought it up.

http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ the otr we ship with. If this is some new Google Talk feature you are talking about, do you have a link with more info?

Change · Post by **Change** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:42 pm

Yes you're right standardmess, thanks for clarifying. I guess I should have done that myself but I thought the people here would follow any messenger news closely

More info from Google itself:

What is 'off the record'?
Chats that have been taken off the record aren't stored in your Gmail chat history, or in the Gmail chat history of your contact. You and the person you're talking to can both see when a chat is taken off the record, and you'll be notified if off the record mode is disabled. Your off the record settings will apply whenever you chat with this person, until one of you makes a change.

To take a chat off the record:

1. Click Options in the bottom-left corner of the chat window.
2. Select Go off the record.

A message will appear confirming that future chats with this particular contact will be off the record, unless one of you changes the setting. If you decide at any time that your chats no longer need to be off the record, click Cancel at the top of the chat window, or Stop chatting off the record in the chat window's Options menu.

Keep in mind that if you're talking to someone who is connected to the Google Talk service with a third-party chat client, it's possible that his or her software is keeping a separate copy of the chat history.

https://mail.google.com/support/bin/ans ... topic=8405

This functionality has been introduced a couple of days ago.

standardmess · Post by **standardmess** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:43 pm

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answ ... swer=29291

That describes it.

Change · Post by **Change** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:44 pm

The_Tick wrote: http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ the otr we ship with. If this is some new Google Talk feature you are talking about, do you have a link with more info?

In case Google Talk supports this, it will probably *still* show up on Google (Gmail I suppose you could call it). Confusing to have two different kinds of OTR

Google's OTR doesn't have anything to do with encryption, it only has to do with logging.

Post by **The_Tick** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:46 pm

Looks like you can disable it inside your gmail account settings. As far as disabling it on their end, when Libgaim supports it, so will we.

You could certainly file a trac ticket for the latter, but the former looks controllable on your end.

Post by **The_Tick** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:47 pm

Change wrote:
The_Tick wrote: http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ the otr we ship with. If this is some new Google Talk feature you are talking about, do you have a link with more info?
In case Google Talk supports this, it will probably *still* show up on Google (Gmail I suppose you could call it). Confusing to have two different kinds of OTR Google's OTR doesn't have anything to do with encryption, it only has to do with logging.

More Adium users know the encryption OTR as "off the record". I don't see the name changing.

Change · Post by **Change** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:51 pm

Yes, I realize I can turn logging off completely, but it would be nice to do it on a per-chat basis (like Google Talk). It's useful to have a chat history available online, searchable and accessible from anywhere, in general. However, I'd like to keep some conversations from ending up in Google's database. If you're chatting with 2 people and you want one logged but the other not, this is not possible with Adium it seems..

I guess I'll have to find out how to file a "trac ticket" then.

I wasn't looking for a name change by the way.. not sure why you're so defensive but ok..

Edit: Submitted here:
http://trac.adiumx.com/ticket/3005

Post by **The_Tick** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 11:10 pm

Change wrote:I wasn't looking for a name change by the way.. not sure why you're so defensive but ok..

I was not being defensive. You are reading too much into things.

cellophane · Post by **cellophane** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 9:49 pm

Change wrote:Yes, I realize I can turn logging off completely, but it would be nice to do it on a per-chat basis (like Google Talk). It's useful to have a chat history available online, searchable and accessible from anywhere, in general. However, I'd like to keep some conversations from ending up in Google's database. If you're chatting with 2 people and you want one logged but the other not, this is not possible with Adium it seems..

I guess I'll have to find out how to file a "trac ticket" then.

I wasn't looking for a name change by the way.. not sure why you're so defensive but ok..

Edit: Submitted here:
http://trac.adiumx.com/ticket/3005

This feature, wherever it comes from, should most certainly be added. It's critical for interoperating with other Google Talk users, not just Adium users. Encryption and going "off the record" are two different things. Going "off the record" depends on mutuality and should definitely be available on clients that support their implementation of the protocol.

I'm surprised and disappointed that you've blown this off so easily without much consideration. If I'm having a conversation with users via Google Talk, I want to have some chats be logged server side and some chats kept from being logged. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Post by **The_Tick** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 9:52 pm

Yes, which is why the trac ticket is still open. I'm not sure where you got the impression that it was being blown off, but it's not.