> Actually I wondered if that might be the case so I checked TFM: https://freenode.net/kb/answer/registration

You can do all that over an encrypted connection [1] if you like. All this protocol nitpicking kind of ignores that IRC is a stack that is a) open to a multitude of clients and thus use cases (vs. all those fancy web-things that offer me either lockin and emojis or a lack of user base) and b) proven over decades. Yeah, it has it's inherited edge cases and downsides but this thread makes it seem like it's a stupid idea somebody came up with in 2 hours, which it is absolutely not.

[1] https://freenode.net/kb/answer/chat

> Actually I wondered if that might be the case so I checked TFM: https://freenode.net/kb/answer/registration Plaintext negotiation is my complaint. I doubt we'd be discussing this if it was plaintext storage. Not even the most fanatical IRC proponent would be okay with that.

We are running our own IRC servers and you can't connect without using TLS, I still don't know what's your issue is with the registration ? You would need to have access to the machines that are running IRC servers to use that information. It's like saying that none of the standard authentication over the internet (login + password to your bank, your slack account, google cloud etc) using encrypted connection is not secure because you are entering password in plaintext.

> Where is your znc hosted? How much does it cost? Are you paying for a VPN service (please no)?

It's hosted at one of the largest datacenters in Europe. We are not using cloud. Cost is low, very low, compared to Google cloud/AWS we are paying around 50x times less for our whole infrastructure. But we digress now from the main discussion.

> Are you paying for a VPN service (please no)?

We are running our own VPN servers on dedicated hardware.