Pidgin

About Pidgin

Pidgin is the most popular instant message client for GNU/Linux, Windows, and macOS. You can download Pidgin here https://pidgin.im/download. For Mac, check out Adium, the native build of Pidgin for Mac.

Setting up an account

When you first start Pidgin, click the Add... button to add an account.

(1) In the tab Basic, set these values:

• Protocol: XMPP
• Username: your Riseup username
• Domain: riseup.net
• Password: your Riseup Passwords

Optionally, set the local alias as your name, optionally choose an icon for yourself. Other people will see this in their buddy list and when you message with them.

Using OTR

See the Off-the-Record Messaging tutorial for details on using end-to-end encryption with Pidgin.

Securing pidgin on GNU/Linux with “AppArmor”

For added security on Linux systems, we recommend you secure your pidgin following these steps:

• copy usr.bin.pidgin to /etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.pidgin
  • usr.bin.pidgin for Ubuntu 14.04
• restart apparmor sudo /etc/init.d/apparmor restart
• restart pidgin

Tor with Pidgin configuration

For configuring Pidgin to use Tor, you need to modify your account settings as follows:

First chose Modify Account Settings…

Then click the Advanced tab and set these values:

• Connection Security: Require encryption
• Connect Port: 5222
• Connect Server: at Riseups list of .onion services look for xmpp.*.onion
• File Transfer Proxies: proxy.riseup.net

Then click on the Proxy tab…

Set the proxy type as Socks5, set the host and port as shown in the image, and set your username and password.