Off-the-record messaging is a technology which provides Encryption and authentication for instant messenger conversations by using a public key/private key system. OTR is currently available in a couple of clients (Gaim, Adium) on several platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows). It uses short-lived keys, which means that the corruption of a private key does not mean that all the security of previous conversations is corrupted, too (perfect forward secrecy). Even in the case a key might be stolen, there will be no way to prove that a certain OTR key has been used by a certain person in a conversation (deniability).

There is also a OTR proxy software which can be used locally with clients that do not yet support OTR themselves.

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