ChatterboxTown.US is a public XMPP instant messaging service provider hosted in the USA. XMPP is a privacy and security focused, instant messaging protocol. No phone number or email required to create an account. With OMEMO enabled messaging clients, your communication is end to end encrypted.
It is our goal to help promote interest, development, and the practical use of the XMPP protocol, its messaging platforms, and related projects. We hope to see a more universal interoperability between Android, iOS, Linux, and Windows operating systems.
At this time we unfortunately do not recommend our service for iOS users if you intend to take advantage of XMPP audio/video calling. While the feature works in general, there is still a problem with call notifications. iOS will not ring when the messaging app is backgrounded (or when the phone is sleeping). We would recommend iOS users use the sure.im XMPP service provider for better compatibility with iOS devices. Otherwise, our service works fine for general text messaging since push notifications will notify you of incoming messages while the messaging app is backgrounded or when the phone is asleep.
This server runs ejabberd version 23.10-1 on Ubuntu version 24.04.1 LTS on a VPS at a professional hosting provider.
To use our instant messaging service, you first need to create an account:
CLICK HERE TO CREATE AN XMPP ACCOUNT.
Log in to your account with an XMPP/Jabber client such as the following:
There are other XMPP clients available. However, to get you started quickly we recommend those clients for your appropriate devices because they have the feature sets that can give a new user a more complete experience of XMPP from the start.
It has been our observation that audio and video calling via Chrome based browsers on these web bassed XMPP clients are problematic. So far, Firefox works consistently.
You can use the following web based XMPP clients to chat via the web browser. Simply use your account name (i.e. username@chatterboxtown.us) and your password. Your contact list and bookmarked group chats will also be available in the web based clients.
We host a Movim Pod at movim.chatterboxtown.us which is a web XMPP client and a federated social network. You can use our Movim Pod to log into your ChatterboxTown.US XMPP account or any other XMPP service provider account. You can also use our Movim web client to register an account on this XMPP server. Noteable features include OMEMO, audio/video calling, file transfers, and blogging. Learn more about Movim here. The Movim Project is currently looking for artists that would like to help with artwork for the project.
We host a converse.js web client at chatterboxtown.us/cjs Our converse.js web client will only allow login and registration to ChatterboxTown.US accounts. We make this available for your convenience and to demonstrate the converse.js web client. We encourage you to run your own converse.js web client if you have your own web server and some technical knowledge. Notable features include OMEMO and file transfers. Unfortunately, converse.js does not yet support audio/video calling.
We also host a JavaScript XMPP Client (JSXC) web client at chatterboxtown.us/jsxc. Our JSXC web client will only allow login to ChatterboxTown.US accounts. We make this available for your convenience and to demonstrate the JSXC web client. We encourage you to run your own JSXC web client if you have your own web server and some technical knowledge. Notable features include OMEMO, file transfers, and audio/video calling.
Another great service to look at is JMP.chat. With this service, you can get a phone number to be able to send and receive SMS via your JID. Incoming and outgoing voice calls work with XMPP clients that support it. There is voicemail and voicemail transcription sent to your JID. Visit JMP.chat for more details!
ChattterboxTown.US is 100% compliant as tested by Compliance Test @ Conversations.im.
The ChatterboxTown.US XMPP server has been configured with the following settings:
- Server-side message archiving of up to 30 days. However, you can prevent server-side message archiving altogether by explicitly turning it off in your chat client setting.
- One on one chats are archived by default, unless the chat client explicity disables chat archiving.
- Group chats (or Multi-User Chat, MUC) have message archiving turned off by default. It must be explicitly enabled by the room admin in room settings via the chat client. NOTE: Some clients have message archiving turned on by default when creating a room. Double check your room settings. There is a 20 message history retrieval limit.
- You can transfer files up to 2GB in size. However, your user account will only accomodate up to 4GB total file data in a 7 day period. So, if you send a 2GB file, you will be only be able to transfer another 2GB of files until the previous files expire and free up space.
- File retention maximum 7 days
- Audio and Video calls are available on messaging clients that support them. So far, only Movim (web client), JSXC (web client), Conversations and blabber.im (Android), and Siskin (iOS) are known to actually be able to do audio and video calls with each other. Gajim (Linux) is known to have working audio and video calling, but only with other Gajim clients. Gajim for Windows has not had working audio or video for decades.
- We do not collect personal information and we respect your privacy. But, we would like to remind you that YOU are in charge of your privacy with XMPP. Be sure to use a client that supports OMEMO or OpenPGP and enable it for end to end encryptioin of messages and data between you and your recipient. Yes, the server will archive these exchanges for a short amount of time, but with end to end encrytion enabled on YOUR and YOUR RECIPIENT'S messaging client, the server only recieves encrypted data that only YOU and YOUR RECIPIENT can decrypt.
- The Biboumi IRC Gateway has been added to our service. You can now use your XMPP account and client to connect to IRC channels. For example, if you want to join the IRC channel #channelname at IRC server irc.server.com, in your XMPP client you would join MUC address #channelname%irc.server.com@ircgw.chatterboxtown.us See Biboumi End-user Documentation for more usage help. This feature has been added to ChatterboxTown.US for convenience. But please note the IRC gateway does not conform to the same privacy level as our main XMPP service, whether you're using encryption or not. This is exactly as if you were running your IRC client on someone else's server. Only use our Biboumi IRC gateway if you don't intend to have any private conversation on the IRC channels.
- Accounts inactive for 6 months are automatically deleted.
It's simple...don't do anything illegal, don't be stupid, and don't be a jerk. Abuse reports will be investigated.
e-mail:admin@chatterboxtown.us
Web chat:Log in with a name and any password. Click on my contact name to send me an instant message.
Our public chat room:chatterboxtown@conference.chatterboxtown.us
We encourage you to participate, by reporting bugs and feature requests, and contributing to the different developers of XMPP software and projects you enjoy.
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The ChatterboxTown.US server is on a VPS hosted by IONOS by 1&1 Hosting Provider.
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