Comment by nly
4 years ago
It certainly gets around some of the privacy concerns you get once your platform has message persistence.
On the other hand, the mobile/cellular world has been largely responsible for killing off IRC.
4 years ago
It certainly gets around some of the privacy concerns you get once your platform has message persistence.
On the other hand, the mobile/cellular world has been largely responsible for killing off IRC.
I don't think IRC ever had much of an expectation of privacy. Just because you didn't keep logs yourself does not mean the IRC server didn't. Using a bouncer does nothing for that.
Most IRC networks are relatively small and/or are/were run by techies with no real incentive to log everything. Also, almost everything culturally about IRC relies on trusting the IRC operators to keep things running smoothly and moderate appropriately.
UnrealIRCd (a popular IRC server implementation) have actively refused to add features in to the code-base that allow IRC operators to snoop on private messages or covertly on channels, for example.
Slack, Facebook, Reddit, and whoever else we all use these days, keep every private message ever sent logged for all time and this is just accepted.
> UnrealIRCd (a popular IRC server implementation) have actively refused to add features in to the code-base that allow IRC operators to snoop on private messages or covertly on channels, for example.
Someone should have told Angrywolf. This module was on every "we used to be on BigNet but we split off because reasons" UnrealIRCd network for a while, haha
https://pastebin.com/EVkudZVb
(disclaimer: don't use it for moral reasons, but also because I've not vetted the code in any way beyond checking it looks a bit like code)
> UnrealIRCd (a popular IRC server implementation) have actively refused
That's really moot because operators can certainly and easily snoop the traffic on the wire. Therefore I agree with the statement above that one should take IRC for what it is: lightweight, convenient, but don't assume any privacy - and it can be perfectly fine.