Welcome to jabber.cat

This is an open Jabber / XMPP server. You can register an account and chat with other people in the Jabber network.

Jabber clients

It depends on your phone or computer which Jabber program you can use: For Android, the recommended client is Conversations. You can get it in Google's play store (for a small amount of money and it's worth it) or in the free software repository F-Droid (for free). An alternative for Android is Chatsecure. With a Windows or Linux computer, you might to try Gajim. Please make sure to install plugins for end-to-end encryption, namely OMEMO (only in available for Gajim) or OTR. For Macs, Adium is a popular Jabber client.

Why Jabber? We have Whatsapp?

The cool thing about Jabber is that it is not a centralized service. Jabber is not run by a single company. Anyone can run a jabber server and invite people to get an account. This is more failsafe and much harder to surveil.

How to find people?

Just think of e-mail: You'll have a so-called Jabber ID that is composed like an e-mail address (nickname@server.domain). Here, your address will be <your-nickname>@jabber.cat. You have to exchange Jabber IDs like you exchange e-mail addresses with your friends. There is no central "addressbook".

Security and encryption

Logging and data retention

General server log (journald)

  • Keeping logs for 7 days

Apache web server logs

  • Not logging any IP addresses (with mod_removeip)
  • Log level: error
  • Keeping logs for 7 days for debugging purposes

"Gate" between web traffic and XMPP traffic for XMPP on port 80 and 443 (sslh)

  • Not logging the individual connections

Prosody Jabber server logs

  • Error log only.
  • Kept for 3 days for the debugging of malfunctions of the jabber server
  • Prosody is running with mod_lastlog! The time of your last login or logout is recorded so that unused accounts can be recognized and removed from the server.

Prosody: Message archive management and mod_offline

Server-side message archiving is turned on. This enables your different devices to fetch the chat history if they were offline. Please be aware of unencrypted chats being saved on the server as clear text! Use end-to-end encryption! The archive expires after 14 days. Some clients, e.g. Conversations for Android, let you configure the archiving behaviour (in the account settings).

Prosody: HTTP file upload

  • Note that all files you upload in unencrypted chats are just "protected" by a long hash in the web address. They are accessible to anyone who knows the exact link to the file.
  • Use end-to-end encryption and the file transfer proxy instead whenever possible. (Meaning: Send it directly to the other person's device without making it accessible via a weblink.)
  • You can upload files of up to 10 MB.
  • All uploaded files are deleted after 14 days.