Ricochet Refresh is an open-source project to allow private and anonymous instant messaging
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What sets Ricochet Refresh apart:
Nobody knows who you talk to or what you say
None of your contacts know your location or IP address
There are no servers to trust, monitor, or hack
Your messages are automatically secure and private
In-built native file transfer from within the app
The source code is available for inspection and development
Ricochet was launched in 2014 as a different approach to instant messaging that doesn’t trust anyone in protecting your privacy.
Ricochet Refresh uses the original Ricochet open-source software but has improved on it substantially, such as upgrading its security and making it compatible with Tor Onion Services v3 instead of the older v2.
We believe software like Ricochet is important to protect freedom of expression for whistleblowers, activists, and journalists worldwide.
Ricochet Refresh is a peer-to-peer messenger app that uses Tor to connect clients. When you start Ricochet Refresh it creates a Tor hidden service on your computer. The address of this hidden service is your anonymous identity on the Tor network and how others will be able to communicate with you
To start a chat with someone you need to add the address of their Ricochet Refresh hidden service to your contacts. When you start a chat with one of your contacts a Tor circuit is created between your machine and the your contact's machine. A Tor circuit consists of a series of hops between your machine, Tor nodes, and your contacts machine. It is this use of multiple nodes that provides anonymity, no single node knows both the origin and destination.
To find out more about Tor check out the Tor Overview documentation.
If you are developer and would to like find out more about contributing to Ricohet Refresh please visit our GitHub Repository
Refreshing Ricochet is a big project and we can't do this alone. If you're an open source developer, we want you to help us continue to update and improve Ricochet Refresh.
You can contribute to our GitHub Repository, whether that's with code, by alerting us to bugs you've found, or your suggestions for new features.
Alternatively, if you want to volunteer your time in another way, please contact us.
Below you will find the latest version (3.0.15) of Ricochet Refresh (V3). This includes a major upgrade of the underlying communication system to move to v3 of tor onion services. Unfortunately this means it is not backwards compatible with older (legacy) versions of Ricochet.
If you are new to Ricochet Refresh you should download the latest version below. If you are a current user you should upgrade as soon as possible. Not only are v3 onion services more secure, tor's support for v2 onion services is ending in October 2021. It is essential you have upgraded to Ricochet Refresh V3 by this date, and ideally well before!
We will continue to make the old (legacy) version Ricochet Refresh available to download up until it ceases working when tor's support for v2 onion services ends. You can download Legacy Ricochet Refresh from here.
We would recommend the following upgrade process:
If you are developer, or are comfortable compiling from source, the latest sourcecode for V3 can be found on GitHub
All releases are GPG signed by 07AA 9DAA 7088 B94A F3D4 0084 D83A 26FD F505 0FE0
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Blueprint for Free Speech is a charity that provides research and analysis in support of freedom of expression for all people, as described the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
To ensure these fundamental rights are upheld, we seek a world where protections for free and independent media, freedom of speech, freedom of information, institutional transparency, and support for whistleblowers, are all enshrined in law.
Find out more about Blueprint for Free Speech at our Website
Contact the team on Twitter: @r2refresh
More information about Blueprint can be found at our website blueprintforfreespeech.net.
You can contact the team at ricochet@blueprintforfreespeech.net, our email PGP Key is 7A0F C89F 858F 3740 918C F954 5D89 F618 4742 8EFD. The repository for this website is also on GitHub.