**The Conglomerate** (**conglomerate.com**) is a chat beacon - a server that lets people connect to each other peer to peer. Effectively, this means that apart from the initial handshake, none of the chatting is ever //done// on The Conglomerate, unless expressly consented to by both parties for logging purposes.

It's considered a decently secure way to have private conversations, especially since the chat protocol itself is encrypted - but it still runs on software supplied to client machines by The Conglomerate server and thus requires some degree of trust in that none of it is rerouted.

(True security would have to run deeper and be realised through software inherently available and audited on client machines.)

=====Keys=====

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Conglomerate 'keys' are simply connection components. They don't factor into the encryption, but they allow initial connection to a room by identifying the chatroom. They can be used providing the room itself hasn't completely detached from the Conglomerate server (by being declared 'full').

Note that this doesn't invalidate the claim that none of the chat data ever goes over the server - but the server //will// maintain a list of connections per room as long as it hasn't expressly been told to detach and butt out. In that sense, it purely serves as a connection pool and as a provider of the (volatile) software needed to run Conglomerate chats.

=====Activity=====

===Sessions===

  * [[http://wildcard.thorngale.net/news/log-027-the-conglomerate/28.html|Log #026 [The Conglomerate]]], wherein [[http://wildcard.thorngale.net/character/alexander-brady/7.html|Alexander Brady]] and [[character:Denizen:Andrew Patel|Andrew Patel]] meet about access to [[Sanctuary:Fragment:Aurelius Rising]].

{{tag>[work-in-progress]}}