RetroShare
DESCRIPTION:
Retroshare establish encrypted connections between you and your friends to create a network of computers, and provides various distributed services on top of it: forums, channels, chat, mail… Retroshare is fully decentralized, and designed to provide maximum security and anonymity to its users beyond direct friends. Retroshare is entirely free and open-source software. It is available on Android, Linux, MacOS and Windows. There are no hidden costs, no ads and no terms of service.
Chat
Send text and images. Discuss with various people in decentralized chat rooms (like IRC). Express your emotions with the rich smiley set. Use distant chat to securely chat with friends-of-friends.
Send encrypted messages to other members of the network. Retroshare securely stores messages on friends’ nodes to deliver messages while you’re offline.
File sharing
Share files with your friends or with the whole network. Use the search to find files. Retroshare uses swarming similar to BitTorrent, to accelerate transfers. This makes it possible to share large files. Your privacy and anonymity is guaranteed beyond direct friends with anonymous tunnels.
Forums
You can read and write forum posts offline. This is perfect while you’re on the go. When you have an Internet connection, Retroshare will automatically sync forums with your friends. Decentralized forums are censorship resistant by design.
Links
Share your favorite links. See which links others like. Vote and discuss them using the built-in commenting system.
Channels
Channels allow you to publish your files. You may subscribe to channels and automatically download the latest files; comment on files and spread them to your friends.
Protect your IP with Tor/I2P
Retroshare can optionally be used over the Tor and I2P networks. Doing so, even friend nodes cannot see your IP, which allows to safely and anonymously connect to unknown people.
While it is always possible to configure a normal Retroshare node to also use Tor, we provide specific builds that embed and manage Tor automatically, to ease things up. This is an excellent way to safely try the software while connecting to untrusted users.
Voice and Video (Experimental Prototype)
Make free and secure calls with the VoIP plugin. Catch up face to face with a video call.
You stated above that “Retroshare securely stores messages on friends’ nodes to deliver messages while you’re offline.”. I am having trouble with receiving offline emails in Retroshare, is there some configuration that I need to do in order to make this happen? My network currently consists of around 14 friends.
Thanks
In order to send and receive messages, at least some of the nodes need to be “special” nodes to be able to deliver them. Please use Retroshare’s official support for these things. http://retroshare.cc/ as it is beyond us 😉
Ok, thanks for the response.
Just wanted to post a quick follow up after speaking with a Retroshare dev.
When I was having trouble receiving offline messages, I was sending them by right clicking on the persons name under the Network tab and selecting “send message”. This sends the message to the persons identity instead of sending it to the Friend Node. This method will not cache the message in the network, and it is deprecated and will be removed in the future. The proper way to send a message in Retroshare is to send it to the addresses located under contacts in the People tab, or to use the addresses listed on the left side of the Compose mail tab. This method will send the message to the Friend Node and allow it to be cached in the network for offline delivery. I have tested this out and it works.
Great! Thank you. Very useful! Also, I think they will push a new update soon to Retroshare. One of the first in years, Waiting for that!
Yup sure enough, looks like they have released the source code for the next release.
https://github.com/RetroShare/RetroShare/releases/tag/v0.6.6-RC2
Great!