The best recommendation I have at the current time is OTR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging, authenticate your key fingerprints, ensure that neither party's chat program is logging, and that both computers are free of malware.

Pidgin supports OTR, but it crashes enough to raise concerns about that last point.

I'm confused. The above poster asked what a good chat program is for communicating with other people (namely non-technical users) where the user can't get spied upon.

This isn't so much a "how can I be secure" question, but a "what alternatives to Skype do I have that work on Linux" question.

Which is one I'm also interested in, since I also want something thats (1)linux compatible, (2) easy and accessible for "average users" of any OS, (3) and secure. And I'm hoping for those things in that order.

If you are talking to an average user (implied by #2), then there are short odds that at some point their machine will be compromised, at which point it doesn't matter how secure the communications channel is.

I should clarify, I don't mean secure from all angles. In terms of security I don't want a company looking through my chat logs, and I don't want someone who be able to see what I'm saying via a wifi sniffer.

Pidgin with OTR fits the bill. It should really be standard with Pidgin/Adium/anything.

For privacy in asynchronous text communication email with GPG is still pretty much as bulletproof a solution as you can get.

For real-time text chat you can try Cryptocat: it's cross-pratform, implements the OTR protocol [1] and is rather user-friendly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging

SSH into a secure common server and use talk(3) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_(software)) ;-)

I've switched to Yate's QT client (http://yate.null.ro) for all my communication needs. allocate about 512MB of RAM to a VM for Asterisk/Openfire/FreePBX, and connect to it. You'll have voice/video plus instant messaging, with no central authority snooping on all your conversations.

I realize I could probably use Yate for everything, but I know asterisk and openfire better at this point, so I use them. :)

Hide your messages in Bitcoin?

http://www.fastcolabs.com/3007320/tracking/bitcoin-coming-br...

I laughed, because it's funny to think that someone concerned about Microsoft snooping on their chat sessions would be willing to somehow publish those same messages into a (very public) blockchain.

Google Hangout maybe?

That's a bold suggestion given the recent climate here.

I think that was meant as sarcasm :)

IRC if you don't require audio and video.

IRC not usually very secure.