Connect with Friends and Family

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Retroshare creates encrypted connections to your friends. Nobody can spy on you. Retroshare is completely decentralized. This means there are no central servers. It is entirely Open-Source and free. There are no costs, no ads and no Terms of Service.

Why

  • A Decentralized Social Sharing Network designed For the People with no dependencies on any corporate system or central servers.
  • Make strong crypto useable for the average computer user, have strong crypto in daily communication.
  • The right to have secrets. You decide who can receive information. Hide information from intelligence agencies and spying companies.
  • Freedom of speech, no censorship.
  • Independence from corporate systems and centralized servers. Central services might shut down or change their terms of services at any time. Do you remember Myspace? Or German Studivz? Remember when Facebook changed their terms of service? Skype being bought by Microsoft?
  • Free software. Only free software can provide free and secure communication. Developers can read Retroshare's source code and verify the security.

Features

  • Chat
    Send text and images. Discuss with various people in chat rooms. Express your emotions with the rich smiley set. Use distant chat to securely chat with friends-of-friends.
  • Voice and Video
    Make free and secure calls with the VoIP plugin. Catch up face to face with a video call.
  • Mail
    Send encrypted messages to other members of the network. Retroshare can store encrypted messages on friends nodes to deliver messages while you're offline.
  • File sharing
    Share files with your friends or with the whole network. Use the search to find files. Retroshare uses swarming similar to BitTorrent, to accelerate the download. This makes it possible to share big files with 1GB or more. Your privacy is protected with anonymous tunnels. Only your direct friends might learn which files you download.
  • Forums
    you can read and write forum posts offline. This is perfect while you're on the go. When you have an Internet connection, Retroshare will automatically sync forums with your friends. Decentralized forums are censorship resistant by design.
  • Posted
    Share your favorite links. See which links others like. Vote and discuss links.
  • Channels
    Publish files in channels. Subscribe to channels and automatically download the latest files. Comment on files and spread them to your friends.
  • Protect your IP with Tor/I2P
    Need to hide from Internet surveillance? Can't connect to your friends because of censorship? Need to bypass nasty firewalls? Use Retroshare over Tor to hide the connection between you and your friends.

Technical Specifications

  • Network topology: decentralized Friend to Friend network (F2F)
  • Transport: IPv4 TCP+UDP, Tor
  • UPnP / NAT-PMP port forwarding support
  • Distributed hash table to locate friends
  • Optionally can use dynamic DNS
  • Connect to friends behind NAT with UDP
  • Transport encryption with TLS (OpenSSL)
  • Authentication with PGP keys
  • Services: chat, VoIP with video, multi-user chat, file search/file sharing, forums, link sharing, Retroshare mail
  • Extensible through plugins