Useful freeware, open source apps, and tech sites blog for geeks. (grep??? Hey! What the heck is 
If you use pidgin as your IM client, here's a lifehacker article about a pidgin plugin to keep your messages private. (The article refers to Gaim, but this is same as pidgin)
Just install the plugin, restart pidgin, then you can now send encrypted instant messages to other pidgin users who have the same plugin installed. The nice thing about this plugin is it makes public/private key encryption fairly easy to set up and use. I've tinkered with PGP before, and to me this pidgin plugin is "Secure IM for the rest of us".
If you haven't heard of pidgin, you should check it out. Pidgin used to be called GAIM, and they had to change their name because AOL was going to sue them.
