WTF Happened to AIM

Well i have over 100 females on my AIM buddy list, and trust me they wouldn't switch to IRC. Half of them don't even know how to change their AIM icon, come to think to expect them to learn to use IRC.

Yeah, but not all of us are p1mps0rs, so that's not much of an issue. :D

I personally use AIM for the same reasons that AngelicKnight does and that is, my friends use it and most of them arent that technically savy. I think you would have to be moronic to talk about something that you thought should be confidential over any messaging service such as these. How well can you trust your ISP not to look and attempt to crack your encryption?? If you have confidential things you need to pass then worry about secure chat or secure connections. I personally dont really talk about too many things on AIM or any other messaging service that I would need to worry about someone seeing

So why not leave them? Why stay on a protocol, period, that isn't safe? You have email communication, forum communication, and teaching them irc would take 3 steps:

1. Download this program and install it. Now run it.
2. Type in (since there is only one area to type in) /server blah.foobar.com
3. Type in /join blahblah


The rest is completely optional, from nick registering to /me, and stuff that will be caught on later regardless due to how many others would be using it. AIM would actually take more steps since a password AND username is required (and avaliable).

Just because showing some of them may seem like a hard thing, give them a bit more credit. You could write up a 3-4 step tutorial that would easily explain things in way that would have them connecting to your server without any problem. Even for end-users.

Don't fall behind and place your communications in a company you don't trust or appreciate just for the sake of people who are going to end up being your weak link in the security chain. Teach them. I don't care if they think it is hard. The world isn't going to become any safer from crackers and exploits if everyone looks at the end users as "it's not worth it because they won't get it anyways lololol".

See what I mean?

And plus:

AOL has updated it's AIM terms of service to remove any hint of privacy in your AIM messages and anything having to do with AIM. "...by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy." Very sad news indeed. They clearly do not care about you or your privacy in AIM.

http://www.runabot.com/aimnews/

Another solution to this too, is use Jabber. You can set up your own jabber server and configure it pretty much anyway you want. I'm not sure if you get all the nice frilly features like webcam and voice chat, but I know it can be tailored very nicely to your individual preference. Another good part is that most of your multi-protocol clients like GAIM and Trillian have Jabber capabilities already. One thing i've learned, is that better isn't always best. Some people just don't care, and would rather have the standard interface. I personally suffer from a conflict of interest, with Yahoo's standard client. I love the features and performance of GAIM, but i like the Imvironments and the sounds that come with the standard client. It's all about features.

The problem with jabber is that it is still following the same ideas as most personal communication protocols, and thus suffers from the same "popularity" bugs that AIM/Yahoo does.

http://arch.jabber.com/archives/2004/05/000100.html

Jabber spam, jabber fishing. Even with your own server you have very little control over content and abuse. especially since a LOT of non-tech users register with the service and release their information to buisnesses offering "jabber" improvements. Once again, jabber suffers from content control.

This is a public communcations area, the internet, and a public communications protocol is only asking for trouble. IRC, SILC, and similar are community controlled protocols that allow proper content control combined with security, all on the whim of yourself. From registered information requirements or not, to banned words or not, you have the finer control versus pming someone over a server that is not within your complete control.

And what good are features if they leave you insecure and unprotected on a network you can't trust or have full control over? If that same idea was applied to operating systems on these forums, the world would end and everyone would walk away with 600 negative points.

A webcam I'm sure is a great feature, but not when the Yahoo servers have complete legislation and copyright over the content you are sending through their servers.. and thus subject to data backup recording, monitoring, and man-in-the-middle manipulation attacks. Just doesn't make sense guys. You either want the internet to become more secure over time and thus take the extra step to get it there, or you don't care about it and thus won't spend time teaching and improving it.

I don't understand why you all immediately think it is hacking. The more likely cause of an outage is maintenance, hardware failure, etc.

Quote:

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I don't understand why you all immediately think it is hacking.

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I believe only a couple mentioned hacking. Then we just got off on a tangent. :D

Because this is a security forum, not a hardware forum :) And thus when we generally address issues we are looking at it from a security perspective, and thus will refer to security perspectives. We all know hardware outages happen, that's obvious. But we are also not in a hardware failure-based forum.

Like a baseball club talking about baseball, when we mention examples in baseball it is obviously because we are a baseball club. Even if blackeyes can happen mostly from self accidents and fights, the blackeyes we are referring to happen from a stray ball.