Hello users!
Recently I’ve discovered that the Prosody module mod_register_web supports hCaptcha now. Previously we’ve used Google’s recaptcha which is obviously not ideal for privacy reasons. hCaptcha is more privacy conscious and rewards site owners for using them. As such, I’ve added hCaptcha to all registration forms!
If you’re interested in implementing hCaptcha as an alternative to Google’s recaptcha, consider using our referral link.
Hello users!
This should have came a LONG time ago, but anti-spam rules have now been applied to the server. There has been a wave of spam recently and it’s annoyed myself and a few other users. I do apologize for how annoying it has been. I hope that the new measures protect against the spam.
If you notice the server rejecting legitimate messages, please contact me. Feel free to do the same if you notice that spam got through the filter.
Hello users,
I’m happy to say that registrations are back, hopefully for good this time. The XMPP daemon we use, Prosody, now supports SNI on outbound HTTP requests. This was added in the latest release (0.11.7). SNI was necessary for Google’s Captcha service to work. It’s unfortunate that we have to use this service, although all other options have been exhausted to keep spam registrations down.
If you’d like an account now, go ahead and make one! Register now.
Hello users!
2019 has been a tough but great year. We’re now in 2020, although we can’t quite celebrate a decade of XMPP.is, we will in 2025. I’d like to say thank you to all of you wonderful and supportive users for a great year. This server has been around for almost 5 years now and won’t be going away anytime soon. A lot of improvements were made in 2019, which can all be seen in the posts here on this site and in the GitHub repo.
I reached my donation goal of $256 (surpassed it actually at $265). This doesn’t even include the cryptocurrency donations I’ve received either! Thanks to all who donated! It means a lot to receive such awesome support. I’ve updated the donation goal for 2020 and set the same goal of $256 USD.
I run this project for fun, but it’s also something I’ve taken more seriously over the years. The fact is, XMPP.is is in use by activists around the world along with people who just want to communicate securely and privately with their friends and family. It has become important for many individuals and I intend to continue supporting it for as long as possible.
Happy New Year everyone!
~ Lunar
Hello users!
Thanks to help from the Prosody developers, I applied changes to the core Prosody code which fixes SNI. This in turn solves the issue with Google captcha returning an invalid response. Registrations now work once again! This time I’ll be sticking with Google captcha, as other solutions have allowed bots to register tens of thousands of accounts in a quick period of time.
The changes made to fix SNI were pushed to Prosody’s trunk branch, which contains unstable code. Rather than switching entirely to Prosody trunk, I applied the code from the trunk branch only to fix SNI. If you’re curious, the changes came from hg.prosody.im/trunk/rev/d4390c427a66 and hg.prosody.im/trunk/rev/6c804b6b2ca2. The commit I made at GitHub is here as well github.com/unredacted/xmpp.is/commit/dec09989c3164903588cf41b6e7ba4ca3eadf2c9.
I decided to make these changes because of the growing popularity of the server. I also know that the server is used by activists, journalists and people simply looking for a secure and privacy friendly way to chat. This is very important to me, so happy chatting!
~ Lunar