Privacy using IRC protocol

[David Woolley]

On 14/01/18 20:24, Dave McMahon wrote:
> I'm sort of an amateur to IRC, I used to use AIM for OTR messaging. I 
> was wondering if messages between myself and another user are private 
> through Pidgin are private. IE, if I message another user directly, can 
> our conversation be seen by a third party in some channel or is our 
> conversation strictly between us? This is not an issue of security, we 
> simply prefer to know that we can't be "overheard".
> 

With the exception of Bonjour (which cannot be used on the internet), 
all messages go through a server that is outside the control of Pidgin. 
Any end to end encryption will be a function of the protocol used, and 
the third party server.  I don't believe that IRC intrinsically provides 
end to end encryptions, but there may be plugins that impose end to end 
encryption on top of the actual IRC communication.