Why Encrypted ? Sometimes, you pass some private information to your friends or family using IMs. Other times you are having a secret conversation with your girlfriend or boyfriend or both through IMs. Either way, you wouldn't like if the conversation was leaked to a third party. You don't need to encrypt your messages every time you wanna chat, but you should encrypt your messages that you think are very valuable and there are probably rivals or enemies that are tagging your messages. But, i can only show you the door, it is you who needs decide whether to open it or not (i think that was the line Morpheus said to Neo when visiting the Oracle) SimpLite There are a few softwares that you could use to encrypt your messages,the first is a software from Secway, called Simp. There are two versions of the software, commercial and free. The commercial version is called SimpPro while the free version is called SimpLite. Both are just as good, but for the free version, you may only use the encryption software for one IM at a time. Plus, you need to download a specific encrypter for a specific IM. Below are the download links for the four IMs that the SimpLite supports: 1. SimpLite For MSN Messenger 2. SimpLite for Yahoo Messenger 3. SimpLite for Google Talk/Jabber 4. SimpLite for ICQ/AIM But take note that, in order to fully utilize this tool, both you and your chatting partner need to have SimpLite installed, and it must be the same version, or else, your messages won't be encrypted. Miranda and GAIM These two aren't actually encrypting softwares, but are Universal Messengers (UM). The great thing about these two is, they support message encryption, both of the UMs have plugins that are capable of encrypting all incoming and outgoing messages. But just as SimpLite, both parties need to use the same IM client. For example, if you are using Miranda, your chatting partner also need to use Miranda with the same encryption plugin in order for everything to work, this also applies to GAIM. I have written a short intro to both of these UMs in separate articles, you may read them by clicking the link below: 1. Miranda 2. GAIM As i have mentioned above, it is not required for you to encrypt all of your messages. But if you think that you are being spied on by your spouse,boss,rival,enemy or etc, encrypting your message can be a really good idea :)