Chat rooms: State of the Union

May 25, 2007 on 12:24 pm | In Features | 381 Comments

If you are a reader of this blog, you will know that our vocal supporters of Yahoo! Messenger’s chat rooms are frustrated. It is completely understandable.

Though Yahoo! is a big company with over 10,000 employees around the world, a very small number of them work on our chat rooms; in fact you can count them on one hand.

Some of the most frequent complaints are about the instability of chat rooms, the annoying bots, and the lack of chat rooms in the Mac version. This summer, we will introduce improvements that address these issues. Here’s how:

Stability: For the past year, we have worked on rebuilding the entire back end of the chat room system. The original chat room servers are over seven years old, fossils in the world of the internet. They have been re-written from the ground up and are already running in “alpha” mode in our data centers. They will be rolled out to our everyday chat rooms users in the next month. This will greatly improve the speed and stability of chat rooms in the short term. In the long term, it will enable us to continue improving our chat rooms more quickly and efficiently.

Bots: In the next few weeks, we will begin rolling out new security measures to distinguish the humans from the machines. Humans are welcome, machines are not. The result will be a dramatic decrease in the number of “bots” that are spoiling chat rooms.

Mac chat rooms: We are already beta testing a new version of Messenger for Mac that includes, among its many improvements, native support for chat rooms. Yes you read it correctly, native support for Mac chat rooms! Client software is tricky, of course, and sometimes the “bug fixing” takes longer than we anticipate. But we believe it is more important to have a delay and get it right, than to rush and make a mistake. Like the chat rooms team, the Mac team is a small one, but they make up for it with their talents.
As a Mac user myself, I am very glad that we continue to actively support such a great platform as the Mac OS. We appreciate your patience while we get this next version ready.

We know you have been living a long time with the less-than-stellar state of Yahoo! chat rooms. We appreciate your patience as these improvements become available.

Aside from chat rooms, we are also hard at work on a number of great new things from the Yahoo! Messenger team. Millions of you are already enjoying our recently released Yahoo! Messenger for the Web (http://web.im). There is a lot more great stuff coming, so hold on tight.

Jeff Bonforte
Vice President
Yahoo! Messenger

381 Comments »

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Jeff Bonforte, this is the blog that we have been waiting for, from the Yahoo Inc. officials. Kudos!

Comment by gothicmemberyoda — May 25, 2007 #
Thank you Jeff. AFAIK this is the first news I have heard about the status of the Mac version of messenger. I was only hoping for feature parity with things like voice, and photosharing. The addition of chat support was a nice bonus. Can’t wait to try out beta 2.

Comment by Alan — May 25, 2007 #
Thank you very much Jeff. This is definitely something we’ve been wanting to hear for a long time now. =)

See guys, have a little faith, and good things happens.

Comment by Venom — May 25, 2007 #
I apologize Sarah and Jeff, Thats all I wanted to hear.

Sarah I enjoyed taking the Emoticon survey, sorry for the comments on the post, I didn’t enjoy doing that as I love that the Yahoo messenger team is trying to connect with the users.

Chris

Comment by Chris — May 25, 2007 #
Go, Jeff! Awesome news! Long live Messenger.

Comment by mrbigdeal — May 25, 2007 #
I’m sorry, but I have to play devil’s advocate here for a second (bear with me)…

What about the complaints from users who get booted via server side exploits? Are they next on your to-do list? =)

Then again, if you guys are going to deal with the stability and bot issues, you’ll probably address the boot exploit issues once and for all, right?

Comment by Venom — May 25, 2007 #
Venom,

I think thats one reason they have re-written chat from the ground up.

Comment by Chris — May 25, 2007 #
I also hope those third party chat clients will also be blocked and anything else third party that logs in Yahoos servers.

Comment by Chris — May 25, 2007 #
This is exactly what many of us needed to hear. I’m personally more than contempt knowing Yahoo is aware of and working on the issues. No need to rush these fixes and improvements. No one wants a half baked fix as it would just be even more trouble down the road.

Comment by Infinite_Luta — May 25, 2007 #
YES!!!

Finally its about time we got some news on the Mac version….yeaaaaa!

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!!!!

Alex

Comment by Alex Rodriguez — May 25, 2007 #
Chris – How are chat clients a problem?

Comment by Mike — May 25, 2007 #
Yes I sincerely hope that this fixes all the chat related problems. Last time the Gaim/Trillian Teams were able to crack the Yahoo! Messenger Login Scheme and then made it public which were then used by Chat Clients( like YahElite, YmLite, Yazak etc) Bots and Booters alike to login on Yahoo! Chat Servers. I hope it doesn’t happen this time around for YMSG15 or the future protocols.

Thanx For this Great News!

Comment by Rick — May 25, 2007 #
Finally Yahoo! Makes it! I am glad it takes concern from comments in the blog and acts so quick!

Kudos to Messenger Team!

Comment by Vinay — May 25, 2007 #
Chris, it’s not just the chat rooms that need to be re-written to “address” the boot problem. Re-writing the chat rooms *may* fix mass ignoring.

But it’s take a total re-write of the entire YMSG protocol to fix other boot issues such as PM bombs, invite bombs, and other little annoyances such as the “ghost logins” issue.

Also, 3rd party clients may be blocked for a short time, but somebody will figure out a way around it. It’s only a matter of time. 3rd party clients aren’t even bad compared to spam bots, porn bots, and boot bots (even though some people use 3rd party clients to spam, which again could be addressed as well as the other issues).

Bots = bad.
Booters/Script Kiddies = bad.
Exploits within yacscom.dll = bad.
Voice dominance “exploit” = bad.

Now, let’s look at the good coming from this post…

Fixing the chat stability issues = good.
Addressing the bots = really good.
Messenger for Mac coming with chats = teh good!!!

As you can see, the good outweighs the bad. I honestly feel the “dark ages” are nearly over. =)

Comment by Venom — May 25, 2007 #
Finally now its gone through the legal side of Yahoo! im glad your “Alpha Testing” new Chat functionality and the way chatrooms and bots work but it dont address the problem i have had with yahoo and thats lack of support. i have 360.yahoo.com/vb_packets and my 360 is messed up and generates a 404 page. You failed to fix it for a long time and also you fail to listen to respected chat users of their yahoo problems. I am not getting at you but want to put the word across to you. >:D

Comment by vb_packets — May 25, 2007 #
I just hope it’s not a post of false hopes. I’ve heard horror stories from multiple x yahoo employee’s about ignoring quality if it isn’t good business. Like Mac Messenger being so inferior because it had little gain to political views of certain people. Or ignoring exploits because it was more cost efficient to leave them be then patch them, since it wasn’t hurting income any, so why spend money on fixing exploits if the customers still used the product. etc. I could go on. But I’m just hoping that’s the old Yahoo not todays Yahoo.

Comment by Adam — May 25, 2007 #
PS

I see you brought up 360 vb_packets. Yahoo won’t even let me make one. I’ve tried 5 different email addresses and ALL of them report an error, cannot use email because it’s already in use in 360 system. One of the emails I had literally created 5 minutes before trying it, so how could it be in use by system. Another email was yahoo account itself that I was trying to make a 360 profile for. Tried to get support on issue and got completely blown off. It’s now months later. i still can’t make a 360.

Comment by Adam — May 25, 2007 #
Getting back on subject. about third party chat clients, What would the benefits be to use one If Yahoo fixes most problems with chat rooms? other then use them for spamming?

Comment by Chris — May 25, 2007 #
About 3rd party clients, some people are more comfortable using them that Yahoo! Messenger. You’d have to go and literally ask them.

Comment by Venom — May 25, 2007 #
3rd Part Chat Clients only result in loss of revenue for Yahoo!. I don’t understand how yahoo could allow them to exist in the first place. If everyone start using chat clients nobody would see the ads that are displayed in Yahoo Messenger when in chatrooms and this could lead to potential loss of advertisers as majority of the users would not be seeing any of the ads. On The Other hand how can some third party client be used to work on someone else service that takes lot of maintenance and money its just not right. Yahoo! should definitely do something about chat clients too as they can also be abused by spammers.

Comment by Rick — May 25, 2007 #
As a Mac user, Adium has been my only option for Yahoo! chat rooms. It does a fine job and poses no threat from a spamming prospective. While I know most, if not all, 3rd party clients on the Windows side can be used maliciously, I wouldn’t go as far to say that they should be outlawed. I do agree with the monetary issues concerning clients though.

However, I’m more than happy to see that the Mac team is hard at work on the OS X version. It’s good to see that it’ll offer chat rooms since Adium provides no room list. You have to guess wether or not a room is open. My only question is what is the status of providing voice chat on the next beta for OS X?

Comment by Steve — May 25, 2007 #
the release notes for beta 1 state that beta 2 will in fact contain voice. However it will only be call feature. Chat rooms likely won’t support voice in mac client do to licensing issues with truespeech codec rooms use. however the different codec used by “call” feature will be in beta 2. That much has been stated in the interviews done with mac messenger team.

Comment by Adam — May 25, 2007 #
You didn’t mention when you’re gonna release Beta 2. Is it going to be this summer? Will you release it with the new Chat Room version? When? At least say summer, or a month or something.

You could do a alpha version (of beta 2) even if it has bugs. That will help with better testing.

Or Beta1 r3

Just update it somehow

Comment by Lucky — May 25, 2007 #
Right on yahoo finaly listened to the people have to love that. Know i hope its not all a put on.

Comment by Tony — May 25, 2007 #
Yahoo Chat Rooms is so messed up even though it has the Notification of monitoring the room but what is the use?

Other issues also their own staffs are corrupt selling informations on some old Yahoo Accounts! this is insane! Yahoo Inc shouldnt monitor Chat Rooms only but they should keep an eye on their own staffs!

Its not a rumor but its a fact!

Comment by Dave — May 25, 2007 #
Listen Yahoo….

Stopping the bots is one thing..

“This will greatly improve the speed and stability of chat rooms in the short term. In the long term, it will enable us to continue improving our chat rooms more quickly and efficiently.”

But what about the exploit that allows a person to disconnect any messenger user in yahoo just by flooding them with packets? Fix that and everyone will be 100000x happier.

I understand that if a person is no longer connected and the TCP IP connection on the server still thinks they’re connected it will disconnect the user if so much data gets sent, well it’s an exploit it needs sorting out..

Also, if you want to stop the bots, release a new messenger with a new authentication, Bots go, chat clients go, everyone goes back to using messenger with no booters around…

Now while that’s happening, then do all these “fancy filters” to get bots when they return (if they do)

Comment by cjdelphi — May 25, 2007 #
no more bots? no more TYK pro……bad for ADAM’S business lol

Comment by Q — May 26, 2007 #
There are so many other features that program does that Getting rid of the bots is just a little thing..

Comment by Chris — May 26, 2007 #
Hi,

The new Beta version of Yahoo Messenger for the Mac does not work well. Some of the buttons don’t function at all. I can’t invite people to see my camera, although I can see them. There is no voice connection. The old version, athough it didn’t have voice, worked fine. The layout on the old version is also more intuitive.
Yahoo has great apps. You just need to tweak this a little more. I’m a Mac head, and also a long time user of Yahoo. I hope you can straighten this out. I have a grandson about to be born in California (we’re in Atlanta), and I’d like to use the IM to see him and our daughter and son-in-law. No pressure on you guys

Thanks,

John

Comment by John — May 26, 2007 #
great news no more booting no more botting also close the fight rooms thats where it happens most
i mean why have rooms full of ppl screaming and shouting at there pcs. not good promotion

Comment by bob jones — May 26, 2007 #
As a chatroom user, I don’t live in the fantasy world that you will do anything to fix the chat rooms. We heard that May 15th was the day, noe you say you are still working on it. I agree fix the YMSG protocol, have your support abuse staff ( is that what they really do) respond to incidents not just send out the usual canned response. WE all know how to use the ignore button, Just take a minute of your time and go into room 100, under romance 50s and take a look at the ids. These ids have been reported so many times, yet for weeks they have been there terrorizing the room regulars to the point that no one can get in now. As a customer why would i want to advertise with a company that can’t even fix what they have. As a consumer, why would I want to do business with a company that advertises here. As an investor before the tech bust and after, I am re-thinking whether or not yahoo is really a good investment.

Comment by Kate — May 26, 2007 #
Hi just want to know when you are going ot bring vista messenger out will it have voice for the chat room and conferance rooms i know a few are haveing problems getting voice for chat with windows vista waitting patienely here thank you from Pastor Rex

Comment by Pastor rex — May 26, 2007 #
Yahoo Vice President ,

i dont really care much about bots / booters / hackers and so on but what i’d be more interested is watching some of your Yahoo Staffs that sells information on old Yahoo Accounts!

also how about creating a very much secure servers for logins where noone can spam/boot/exploits us! basically it will be more PRIVATE , pay or free dont really matter to me for this kind of service , this goes the same for such paid programs as booters and so on.

so i’d rather buy a server from Yahoo Inc where noone can touch me in the chat rooms! consider that! after all your aim is to protect chatters right? for those who has the money i am sure they’d rather pay for kind of safety!

Comment by Dave — May 26, 2007 #
think about this Yahoo Inc , i’ll pay for a better chat service where i will not get booted / hacked and so on.

keep your sloppy service but create a much better servers where noone can basically do such bad things to us.

by the way can i buy the license for the use of YMSG Authentication , and how much incase you guys decided to sell it?

Comment by Dave — May 26, 2007 #
regarding International Support for all messengers in different countries why not have this available in one instant messenger where chat users can just switch countries if they wanted to?

Comment by Dave — May 26, 2007 #
Dave,

They are coming out with a much better chat and its free. also for International Support download the messenger of the country you are in.

Comment by Chris — May 27, 2007 #
Yay Close the fight rooms

Comment by SpiderMan — May 27, 2007 #
A long awaited post. To know you are acknowledging complaints is good enough for me and back to my life outside the house I go…The next week is going to be hot and sunny so I will be sure to post some good camel toes in bikinis….lmao j/k

Comment by Polar — May 27, 2007 #
I’am Happy that yahoo is doing a lot to solve all this probelms. Myself dont lot bots nor booters and the fighting that dose go on in rooms thier is a mute buttom so you cant hear them if someone fights in typeing or voice i just leave the room. i agree with the idea on getting the bad stuff out of chat rooms, to make it a better place to chat with friends and family. we all need to use common sense. i asure yahoo will keep its word on fixing everything, One thing i like to realy see come back is the create users rooms, where i prayers over a lot of pepople and lost some friends thier and helped other in couneling. I thank God for a lot of things and i pray for yahoo improvements on thier servers. Amen!

Comment by Pastor rex — May 27, 2007 #
correction i pray over a lot of people,,, i usely type to fast LOL. sorry.

Comment by Pastor rex — May 27, 2007 #
Pastor rex,

Sarah made a post saying Yahoo is unable to bring back user rooms.

“We also know many of you enjoyed our user-generated public chat rooms, which were discontinued. We will not be able to bring them back as a feature. But as a Yahoo! Messenger user, you can easily set up a private conference over IM with many friends at once.”

http://blog.messenger.yahoo.com/blog/2007/01/22/lets-chat/

Comment by Chris — May 27, 2007 #
Bring back “Chat” in “Messenger” for UK & Ireland users please?

Comment by Scott — May 27, 2007 #
Thank you i know that and i know the reson why too i just mess the created rooms where people did come and go. i understand for all the pron thingy that ben going on yahoo intell they was closed Has a Pastor i do pray for people its ok, Conferance room dont help much, i know you have Groups that you can make on yahoo, tried that it didnt work to good due to the voice problems back then when makeing a group online throu the website again thank you for your Feedback this is why i’am waitnig for yahoo to fix the chat rooms so i can go back into the christian chat rooms to pray and help people without the BOTS and BOOTERS and Hackers and the prons too. God bless you.

Comment by Pastor rex — May 27, 2007 #
There’s ideas floating around that *may* just bring back user rooms (not affiliated with Yahoo’s chat servers).

The problem is, it’d only work in specific clients.

Comment by Venom — May 27, 2007 #
Also, if a separate service was launched allowing the creation of user rooms again, they’d be heavily monitored, and malicious activity wouldn’t be tolerated.

Not sure if there’s a demand for something like that though.

Comment by Venom — May 27, 2007 #
You can’t stop those programmer who’s willing to make a booter program… they will do what is necessary to boot the lamers especially those who really think that they are the strongest chatters in a chat room.
If they can make a yahoo client like Y’mLite, Yahelite, Yazak, etc. ofcourse they can make booter program also. The attack is not just as simple sending a PM Bomb with a lot of packets as well as NUKE attack nor Cmode Booting style….. that’s only a sample that you need to work out.

Comment by Anonymous — May 27, 2007 #
You guys need to have the chat rooms moderaterd that way there wont be any problems..

Comment by Chris — May 27, 2007 #
“regarding International Support for all messengers in different countries why not have this available in one instant messenger where chat users can just switch countries if they wanted to?

Comment by Dave — May 26, 2007 #”

“Dave,

They are coming out with a much better chat and its free. also for International Support download the messenger of the country you are in.

Comment by Chris — May 27, 2007 #”

did you read what i posted there Chris?

Comment by Dave — May 28, 2007 #
Dear Yahoo Vice President ,

wether this chat is free or not , what i’d like to see is a better service for chat fanatic like me. we should have like private server which we can use in any rooms we want to be safe from booter/hacker/spam and so on. to this private server make it a people pay for it like a one off payment!

as years that passed by all i see there is money is the problem , Yahoo Inc want more money so why not sell private servers?

thanks.

Yahoo Fanatic ,
Dave

Comment by Dave — May 28, 2007 #
Dave – I did read, The only problem with chargeing for chat, Who would use it?

Comment by Chris — May 28, 2007 #
Did you mean International Support for the blog. if you did you should have said blog.

Comment by Chris — May 28, 2007 #
I agree on the subject that who would want to pay for chat. that just what happen MSN chat when they made people pay for it look what happen they closed thier chat MSN just like CChat years back when micosoft cloesed it too for all the pron thingy’s ben going in chat rooms. I do agree moderateing the rooms just like Paltalk dose and safer. I ben on yahoo for over 5 years and in Paltalk too. And i do see the difference in chatting in both places.

Comment by Pastor rex — May 28, 2007 #
Chris does not work for Yahoo if thats what people are thinking.

My pms are now open so if anyone wants to pm me ill tell you which Alpha Servers are Active and which ones you can connect to on YahElite.

Comment by vb_packets — May 28, 2007 #
vb_packets what is with the website you provided on your name? The page has been deleted.

Comment by Chris — May 28, 2007 #
Your right vb_packets I do not work for Yahoo. I am a user like most of you are. I have been useing Yahoo messenger all the time since the fall of 1997.

I have seen great things comeout of Yahoo! over the years. The two Features I use most of Yahoo messenger is Chat rooms, and Webcams. So when there are problems with any of those features I get very upset.

I cant wait for Chat rooms to be updated, over the past year or so I have seen User created rooms, Java chat, Chat 2.0, also Goto and Follow commands and other features get removed.
Also there are bugs with some rooms and other stuff for chat rooms in the messenger.
So yeah you can say there have been problems with chat rooms. Some of the features that got removed I am glad.

But soon I hope it would all be fixed.

Comment by Chris — May 28, 2007 #
i know it has. Dan needs to close the case on it. He thinks hes gonna get Cool Yahoo when he knows he is not. Its a swell known website and its currently locked. I got Lawsuit papers through from 2002 to sign and return and over 5000 domains listed of peoples which Dan at the Legal Team of Yahoo was taking action towards.

I shredded the papers last year including the nice cardboard box he sent them in. Its my domain and is mine only not “Yahoos” Its not a money making website so they cant do nothing. like i keep saying ” Yahoo is just a word. ” its different if i was a company but because i registered it as Cool Yahoo Inc for a laugh.. he is probably thinking its a company when it is not. Its just a resource website and i still have over 500,000 users in my local database from which i had when the domain was alive.Obviously this is not the case now.

Yahoo have enough domains so i dont think ill give it to them. Anyway cant wait until this new chat service is rolled out. I bet it dont kill all the room spam – people find ways around it and its people who are inteligent. Coders on the Internet always crack the new Protocols and release the DLL’s on the net with the source. Thats why i said kill all the old Prococols and always update them that way it will take a while for them to crack the new Proto.

Comment by vb_packets — May 28, 2007 #
The only way yahoo can block the spam is if they Admin the Chats but that wont happen even though they claim to have over 10,000 employees working for yahoo across the Globe.

The DOM also needs rewriting from scratch. I am counting the days and see if i get spam in the rooms when this new service is rolled out. If im right.. That has to say it all.

Coding is not easy.

just hope Yahoo get the chats right this time because it wont be just me complaining if they dont

Comment by vb_packets — May 28, 2007 #
I agree, keep updating the Prococols. Adventually People who likes to crack them would get sick of Yahoo making changes and stop.

Just an idea

Comment by Chris — May 28, 2007 #
There are alot of people who agree with you, you won’t be the only one complaining.
Unlike some people I don’t stop untill I get an answer.

Comment by Chris — May 28, 2007 #
All that Yahoo has to do is ask users to upgrade to Yahoo messenger 7.5 atleast because the latest cracked login is of yahoo messenger 7 by trillian crew I believe. As the newer messenger versions use secured https connection for login it’ll be relatively difficult to crack (hopefully) but I highly doubt Yahoo would do something like that as we all know they are slow in realizing the needs of situation and by the time they do that someone would have already cracked the new messenger login used in Yahoo! messenger 8 and beyond and thus the spam will continue once the login source is made public.

PS: Yahoo! Chat login is so easy to implement in programs that even kids who have little idea about it make booters in Visual Basic using the DLLs widely available on the net.

Comment by Rick — May 28, 2007 #
hello dear,
yahoo will be more appricable if you let hypen”-”and continues underscores in making yahoo ids.
thanks

Comment by tigerpathan — May 28, 2007 #
It’ll take a massive change to the protocol to assist fending off bots…

But, it seems that on some of the found beta servers that SSL elements are starting to appear. What could this mean? Well, it can mean a) Yahoo’s adding security to the servers and/or b) the YMSG protocol is having security features added.

Comment by Venom — May 28, 2007 #
Well not to put a different turn at things but 3rd party chat clients are not to blame for anything to do with booting and bots as anybody who knows yahoo! chat know that is not the case.

Bots that claim to be using these third party chat clients are obviously spoofed as changes after the builds they show as prove this as for example the 124 emotedata field issue where these bots using a build with the INF in the field are still been seen and we know for a fact thats not the case as they shouldn’t be seen.

People who use chat clients are just the same as other people using third party IM service to connect to yahoo, meebo, trillian, ebuddy, etc they are of no risk to users in chat or do anything bad to chatrooms.

Yahoo! needed to rewrite the servers from scratch and actually disconnect the sender of floods not the receiver, this has been the fundmental mistake in the yahoo! framework for years, thus disconnecting the abuser not the victim as yahoo has been doing for years, that in itself would make a huge difference to booting on yahoo chat.

A captcha type addition to the login would be good and would stop a lot of automated logins from bots and other malicious logins.

Perhaps encrypting YMSG would help somewhat also.

I guess i could mention lots of things that could be done but i would imagine you would have learned a lot in 7 years using the old framework and i hope you make it all better this time.

Good luck!

Comment by Dermot — May 28, 2007 #
I am sorry but I am completely against the idea of Admins in the room. People will act like grown ups.
Just improve protocols so that bots are reduced to negligible.
People like Yahoo! because there is less police. And I don’t want to work under the whims of anyone.

Anyway, once the chat room work is done…we really want Yahoo messeger to improve Voice and Cam quality. Among Skype, AIM, MSN, Lycos and Yahoo!, Yahoo has the worst voice and cam quality. I am not saying that Yahoo messenger is bad…it’s awesome…but some parts need more and more improvement and Voice and Cam should be the first.

Comment by user — May 28, 2007 #
Lets look at the basics, we need encryption on voice calls and chats, thats why Skype is leading, its offering more privacy.

Comment by Muzammil — May 28, 2007 #
Jeff, could you tell us when Yahoo Messenger for Vista will be up and running? It was announced on this Blog in January, but no other information has been forthcoming. Will it be released this year?

Comment by Robin — May 29, 2007 #
That’s all fine and good… I hate the bots just as much as everyone else does, but when are we going to see some work done on the LINUX client?

Comment by KaoticEvil — May 29, 2007 #
Robin,

They said Messenger for vista would be releast second quarter of this year and next month is the last month of the second quarter.

Comment by chris — May 29, 2007 #
Thanks, Chris!

Comment by Robin — May 29, 2007 #
Well jeff seems to know what people want sarah bacon just posts mindless garbage i am not holding my breath though over this spam issue it has been going on since yahoo started and always will they are trying to take the heat off them lol i am not so gullible this will never happen :l

Comment by Karl — May 29, 2007 #
Admins in chat rooms are you guys for real?????? in his post he states there is only a handful of people who work on the chat rooms despite yahoo being a multi million dollar buisness you would have thought they could hire more staff for there chat service admins in rooms would destroy it if that would ever happen it wont yahoo cant be botherd to fix the spam let alone put admin bots or admins in rooms why dont yahoo deactivate all yahoo “illegal ids” they recently deactivated all the ones with cuss words in despite the fact you WERE allowed to make them lol its amusing how gullible you people are how longs yahoo been out? dont you think they know about the spam they are not blind and a few hundred comments will not make them solve this issue LOL

Comment by Tom — May 29, 2007 #
The only good thing i have seen yahoo implament in the chat room is the auto ignore after yahoo messenger 5.6 if somone posts to many messages fast via the chat room this stopped the scrollers etc laggers in chat why can they not build on this..

Comment by Tom — May 29, 2007 #
The auto ignore is broken in 8.1 instead of ignoreing the person sending many messeges. It tries to ignore you and since you can’t ignore yourself error messeges pop up.

There is a reported complaint about this. even tho the page says nothing about auto ignore, it is I created it! http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/22407

Comment by chris — May 30, 2007 #
Glad you’re an Applet, I’m looking forward to more features as the PC users are enjoying. The files transfer is one thing that never work for my Mac when a PC user is trying to send me a file or vice versa.

Now I have to switch to Skype for voice/video chat, it seems to be more stable and the video is closer to real time.

I hope that Yahoo will be able to fix the flaw…I LOVE YAHOO…all my friends are here!

Comment by Kate — May 30, 2007 #
Admins in chatrooms seems the best way to go about it. The people who dont like the idea are people who are up to no good in chats and would rather there not be admins in chatrooms.

I dont think yahoo would do it anyway because they never have kept control over their chatrooms. If you the “Yahoo Messenger Team” and “Vice Presedent” think different then i want to know about it because for so many years we have had to put up with the following listed below.

People Booting us out of chatrooms*
Flooding our internet Dialup Connections*
Trying to Kill our Cable Connections*
Hacking into our systems*
Killing our Computers*
Freezing our Coputers with Voice Freezing Progz*
Arguing on the Mic and being Abusive.
SPAM SPAM SPAM Bots* or should i say Spim?
Sending is Javascript errors*
Sending us to Webpages*
Sending us YPager YahooMessenger.exe errors
Hacking our Yahoo ScreenNames*
Cracking our Yahoo Accounts*
Sending is PM Boot Floods and Conference*

All this is nonsense and im suprised i have not come to my senses and left yahoo messenger already after all these years.

Your Post Mr Vice President* Does it mean all this is going to STOP?

Im currently coding a chat client to keep users away from all this. It is no good. Can you promise us that your going to clear all this up??

? Please Mr Vice President we dont need to put up with this. or do we

? I dunno mate but i hope your going to update us on this pretty soon. Net seems boring lately.

Comment by vb_packets — May 30, 2007 #
I think you’re doing a fantastic job with the Mac client and I enjoy using it. It feels like a Mac application and the integration with Address Book, Growl, and the GUI are top-notch. Yes, I use Adium sometimes due to its support of multiple protocols, but when I don’t need that I use Yahoo! Messenger.

Comment by Tim — May 30, 2007 #
vb_packets,

Net seems boring lately? I don’t even know why I turn on computer anymore. I only do for yahoo messenger.
I found and “reported” over 15 pages since this blog was made. I don’t understand why they can’t beta test with the users instead of in alpha mode?Anything is better then whats available now.

Its been two hours since I tried out chat rooms till bots spim became to bad i had to leave. and I am still getting spim.

I am sick of it. I am going to turn off my computer wait until July and try chatrooms. I need a new hobby anyway.

Comment by chris — May 30, 2007 #
A new messenger client needs to have a shield button like Yazak that basically blocks any non chat room communication. That is the only sure-fire way of protecting against booting.

One problem with chat rooms is that Yahoo has so few people working on it. Less than a handful of people is not enough.

I do miss user created rooms. There was a lot of inventiveness there despite the abuse. Some of the regular rooms now came from popular user created rooms. Chat rooms will stagnate until users are allowed to create rooms.

Comment by DavidN — May 31, 2007 #
If control p signus us out of Messenger, what is the hot key to print screen?

Comment by Jim Vaglia — May 31, 2007 #
I don’t have Verizon storage, folders keep popping up on my computer that I have gotten ridd of like Google desktop, what is up with that?

Comment by Jim Vaglia — May 31, 2007 #
Jeff ……
We just tried your latest version for Yahoo messenger for Mac. It really is so sad to see this from Yahoo team. Absloutly nothing for the Mac platform and although according to all stats we are the fastest growing segment today.

Very disappointing!!!

Seriously my suggestion to all the Mac users, that I would write off Yahoo completely and I for once who is personally a paid customer and subscribe to 4 different Yahoo services will not renew and will give my business to someone else who appreciates the value of a paid customer. In addition our company who exclusively uses the Mac platform spends thousands of dollars on various yahoo services. Not sure why did I continue to allow this to go on. No more support to Yahoo, and we urge all other Mac users to do the same

Mark Qandil
Centex
President

Comment by Mark Qandil — May 31, 2007 #
Well, it’s simple if you think about it. There’s more Windows users than Mac users, so of course the Windows version is going to be favored more.

Common sense. Sure, the new Mac beta will be released, that much we know. The question is when. Who knows. It’s coming.

Comment by Venom — May 31, 2007 #
Hello Jeff Bonforte,

Thank you so much for posting this announcement. A hyperlink to this page was posted on the [Y!M] Group and I will gladly help share the good news with my other Mac friends. I wanted to also give you yet another Mac user’s input.

Please pass along my thanks and encouragement to the Macintosh Y!M development team. Their hard work is very much appreciated, though it may not seem like it with we Mac users being so impatient. Please keep up the good work.

Thanks again.

–Rick

Comment by Rick Rudge — May 31, 2007 #
This is an encouraging sign. Ar least Yahoo is admitting there is a problem. But with their admission that “a very small number of them (Yahoo employees) work on our chat rooms; in fact you can count them on one hand” I can’t imagine progress will come quickly. I’ve been waiting for years for them to update the “Entertainment & Arts/Television” rooms list, where only 12 of the 28 rooms are still actually in production, and three of those are “generic” rooms like TV Lobby, Soap Operas and Sci-fi & Fantasy TV. (Bring back the Big Brother room!)

Comment by Wayne Harke — June 1, 2007 #
Thanks, I love you

Comment by dewb — June 1, 2007 #
when is yahoo messanger for windows vista going to be ready to go?

Comment by joe — June 1, 2007 #
I use a 3rd party chat client because of the booters…it offers me more protection. It also offers other features that messenger does not have. I find it easier to use too. If it were to be blocked, then Yahoo would lose me as a customer. I dont partake in booting, besides, who reads those ads that take up half the messenger screen ?

Booters rely on massive numbers of boot bots…… fake id’s. Would Yahoo consider scanning their database and look for all the id’s that have been created with the same e-mail address as a contact…. surely there is no need for one address to have hundreds of ids connected to it… and therefore you will identify the boot bots used by that person…. and a booter.

Currently the chat rooms I visit are terrorised by a handful of booter-thugs. They follow their victims from room to room, When asked why they do it, one replied “because I can”. If Yahoo can make it so “they can’t” I, and many others would be grateful.
I have no complaint about an extra 5 seconds spent logging in if I have to manually enter a verification code….. it would restrict the automatic log in of booter programs.

Comment by Kim Buckles — June 1, 2007 #
finally some one hears what we type,,,, past few months I been surfing for a new chat area,,, but I com back to yahoo,,, ok I wil hold my breath,,,and pray what is said here is true… I am also reposting this on my 360,,, so my freinds can see…

Comment by den — June 1, 2007 #
Booting and bots will ALWAYS be around.. quote me on that. While Yahoo! can take away a lot of the power from booters and spam bot creators it’s just too easy these days to find a backdoor into the Yahoo! network to send SPIM and other junk. Case in point… with the release of the new Web Messenger this now gives booters more power to flood PMs and Add Buddies etc. with because the login is cookie-based only and has no real secure authentication. Logging in with your Y and T cookies (or v and z) into the Web Messenger network and sending off thousands of PMs to people and add friend requests is now just another avenue for booters to persue and just as easy logging in as the old Web Messenger, which by the way last I checked, is still around (the code to login to the old web messenger to access network resources still works even though the page/interface was updated with the new web messenger one).

Mobile/WAP logins can and will be used to boot and SPIM too (uses the YHOO v1.0 protocol) so that’s yet a second avenue for booters to take even after YMSG 14 down to YMSG 10 are eliminated. There will also be ways to hijack Messenger and boot and spam in this manner too (even using the newest auth schemes, doesn’t matter what they are). Layered Service Providers (LSP’s), Kernel-Mode Drivers and winsock shims can and will always be available to send data over any connection(s) you like and this too is out of Yahoo!’s hands.

I still believe a good start would be to eliminate YMSG v14 and below (v10 is the lowest functional protocol version of YMSG still around). Elimination of YMSG/HTTP logins would also hurt the booters bad because whatever you “patch” in YMSG isn’t always patched or patched correctly in YMSG/HTTP sessions and more and more booters are using YMSG/HTTP these days to send crap loads of packets to chat rooms and invitation floods. I would call that one step in the right direction. Secondly, the entire server architecture should be reassessed so that the same old mistakes aren’t made again (history repeating itself). Lastly, validation for all YMSG service type (packet type) lengths, validation of addressing information (sender and receiver fields) not seen more than once per packet so YMSG amplification flood attacks can’t occur like they have been over several years now.

Good Luck Guys!

PS: Hey Q, without the bots and booting YTK would still have a future. I’ve already explained why before. Those problems may be the lead reason of why people buy such programs to combat them but the sheer amount of IM enhancements and new features we can give you (us 3rd party developers) will still sell the products well.

I’ll list you a couple hundred features and then you tell me if booting ever completely stopped (which btw is IMPOSSIBLE due to unforseen client and server holes) and there were no bots that these other features wouldn’t be worth it.

Comment by Adam [Torseq Tech] — June 2, 2007 #
hey adam i think you should work for yahoo and teach them engineer’s over at yahoo a few things,lmao nice post but will yahoo follow through on your plan

Comment by markj — June 3, 2007 #
Questions For Adam ,

Adam, why get rid of YMSG10-14? If they get rid of this that means less features with your YTKPRO (loss of protocol reversion). don’t forget YMSG15 will also be exploited too right away

Why get rid of YMSG/HTTP? This protocol is very handy when Yahoo’s doing their maintenance

If YTKPRO can handle pretty much anything then you shouldn’t worry much about them protocols

If there’s no booters how can we get rid of the dirty old men in the rooms? I’m not supporting booters at all but its also good in some ways. also don’t forget no more booters no more YTKPRO , YTUNNEL and CHAT CLIENTS

Adam you need to chill out and go with flow like Chet.

What you’re doing Adam , is letting Yahoo Inc do all the jobs for your YTKPRO protection to be lifted up. I got nothing against you at all but don’t you think you’re going a bit too far?

Face it Adam , not even machines or humans can monitor the Chatrooms properly.

Comment by Dave — June 4, 2007 #
If the fun is gone Adam , PalTalk is just around the corner What’s important to Yahoo Inc? Money and continuous incoming $$$$$$$$$$

Comment by Dave — June 4, 2007 #
What Yahoo Inc should do , is to create private servers which we can purchase at the same value as YTKPRO and YTUNNEL , in which we can’t be touch at all by any kind of malicious attacks and such.

Only Yahoo Inc has the power to make us all trouble-free from any kind of attacks.

Comment by Dave — June 4, 2007 #
To VB_Packets ,

Yahoo Chatroom Admins is not the best way! They themselves are corrupt , selling information on old Yahoo Accounts. Goto Game Rooms or give Yahoo Inc a call , you’ll be surprise on how they’ll respond to you when you got money ready to transfer to their PayPal Accounts

Comment by Dave — June 4, 2007 #
Yo just want to apologise to yahoo for posting a Private Testing Server on this blog.

I have about 500 other Testing Servers i found but rather keep them in this text file on my hard drive.

————————————————————————————

Dave Yahoo is all about selling and making money anyway. It would be nice to have admins in chat they theirselves will then realise how unsafe it is and how exploitable their chat servers are.

Having that Protection is a idea. The Admins dont have to be visible in the room btw. They probably in chat anyway under ghost id’s

I remember years ago when you joined the chatrooms the Yahoo cs server also joined the room as a user so dont think Yahoo are not already in the rooms watching and monitoring our Activity.

Its less than 2 weeks now until Yahoo start rolling out this new Chat Service. Thats if Yahoo Inc are still on track of things and are not getting delayed. They should be ontime because they have been testing the new chat for some time now ive been monitoring it for several days.

—-

To mention The Other Program and YTunnelPro they offer better protection. It dont mean you cant be booted. Yahoo have the right to boot you. It could of been yahoo who invented boot exploits on their servers who knows?

Yahoo do have their own Exploit that they activated in these 7 yr old chat servers. a user gets logged out of chat and red writing shows on the screen to confirm you have been logged out of chat.

I have found unsecure chat servers that are also possible to take down i wont say nomore [snip].

I have a very good understanding of the Yahoo Chat Servers and a very good understanding of packets of all types. I just dont like to discuss with other programmers how good i am at programming. Im sorry but im a bit anal when it comes to things like that.

Anyway Yahoo! have got alot of suprises for us coming really soon so for a change lets stop complaining to them about all this. Im sure they know and have had the points stuck up their ass for a long time. I dont know how many points their are on this blog about problems with Yahoo Messenger but i sure have listed several. I dont think Yahoo want to take more points and problems about yahoo chat so lets just post something good for a change.

Lets give them a break and see what this new chat is going to be like.

? Well – are we going to stop cussing at Yahoo until this new chat service is rolled out?

Comment by vb_packets — June 4, 2007 #
?

Comment by vb_packets — June 4, 2007 #
I understood what you said there VB_Packets , still I’m not impress how Yahoo Inc will handle Chatrooms properly.

Forget the idea of having Admins in the room , as mentioned I got something against them as a lot of them are “corrupt” , need I explain this again , sure you know that this has been happening for a while too.

So you know a server you can take down , it don’t really matter. What I expect from Yahoo Inc is to create a much more reliable servers private or non private which is upto them , paid or non paid servers.

I still believe in this saying “What you paid is What you get” , so perhaps you’re right let’s wait and see what they for us in the package

Comment by Dave — June 4, 2007 #
I see now that Yahoo Messenger is eliminating all of the adult chat rooms. Thats too bad. Alot of us adults do use them to meet and chat to each other. We police them to keep out the minors, (they have their own rooms to go to).
If Yahoo spent some time and money, and hired knowledgeable people who understood chat, Yahoo could be making money hand over fist, and have a chat client that would be second to none. You say that your trying to improve it, but all weve seen is a declining decrepid chat client. It’s too bad to see such mismanagement in a business such as yours.

Comment by Carl — June 5, 2007 #
i m computer operator. i m working in construction company. i m living in the yerwada.

Comment by anand — June 5, 2007 #
The real solution? Give EVERYONE the power to boot, and make it work if 51+% of the users in a room agree. Bots will go away. The ones who login 30 names via proxy servers will go away.

Don’t just use our IP addresses for marketing purposes. Consider using IP bans on chat for egregious offenders, even at the risk of blocking other users (university users are a good example of this). ACTUALLY do something about TOS violations. Strongly consider new authentication methods for users that enable you to block a person (or computer which is easier) from accessing the network – and yes I am saying multifactor (2 or 3 methods) of authentication.

Offer and think hard about migrating to requiring USB user keys (hard coded one static key, password and account name required to access the services) for accounts so we dont get locked out by idiots with broadband and scripts and tie the dongle to account info so we don’t need to remember info we told yahoo 3+ years ago and might not recall when we forget our passwords. CHARGE for the dongle yearly so you have credit card info and can track down the child molesters and people who use denial of service attacks easier. Allow three names logged in at once using the dongle and require that if more than one is logged in that they be in different rooms.

Clean up messenger. It is a clunky program. Make all that Yahoo! insider etc crap be turned off by default or only have it show once per week. Make registry/config files SAVE settings.

Yahoo mail offers a full gig of storage, but we only get 100 server side ignores? How about unlimited? SERIOUSLY.

If you block the clients, publish the API for FILTERING extensions so good programmers can make add-ons that will block non-YMSG packets (like bootcodes), and filter anything more than 5? simultaneous IM windows/sessions (and maybe even bounce it back to the user who sent them

I could go on, but what is listed above would be a GOOD START.

Comment by Mike C. — June 5, 2007 #
Those with dongle could get additional features (THAT WORK!) and the ones who are on the 100% free service have limited capabilities. Still functional (voice, webcam, etc) but limited. There are ways to do this is you really want to “take the trash out”

Comment by Mike C. — June 5, 2007 #
Oh and FREE USB dongles for already paying customers (launch, personals, etc)

Comment by Mike C. — June 5, 2007 #
It would be nice while you are improving things that you do 2 more things for us:

1. Please fix messenger 8.1 it has tooooo many flaws.

2. Bring back our Adult chat rooms. Some of us actually do not ruin the entire rooms with stupidity.

Thank you for doing the improvemenets. It is much appreciated.

Comment by Amber — June 5, 2007 #
Bring back our Adult chat rooms. Some of us actually do not ruin the entire rooms with stupidity.

Comment by Kimi — June 6, 2007 #
I have been using yahoo messenger and yahoo caht rooms as a means of comunication with worldwide clients for well over 5 years now, I have never sean in my entire time using messenger the delays in loggign into a room, the theft of Id’s, booting, and especially spam. I has become a requierment that i run a 3rd party software to even get into a Yahoo Chat room. And once there to block the Influx of messages and Chat room text spam. I find it exreamly redundant that yahoo dosent offer a detection algorythm in their software, possable one simulare to what YTunnel or Other 3rd party Clients offer, most of these software’s are avail free of charge, and if a single developer can do it why can yahoo, or is yahoo makin money off our inconvience. The “Bots” fill the room and make it nearly impossable to log into a room without “knocking” or “bumping” (Repeated Join Requests, or loging attempts). Either Yahoo needs to Increase server capasity, or I fear a smart software developer will Start simulare services, and Yahoo Chat will eventually looze its popularity. I can tell you from my own standpoint that I use very few other yahoo services other then chat an messenger, perhalps 360, and flicker, but other then that I use no other yahoo services. I am a roger’s Internet customer, who has parntnered up with yahoo, and i have expressed my consern with the above issues directly to my ISP, how can they condone this type of content, spam and Exploitability, and have been told I’m not the oly one with this consern. I am quite sure that companies like Rogers, SBC Global, and other partners are fed up with the Spam, the booting, the theft of their users Id’s, and the long wait time to log into chat, that I will remind you was supposed to be addressed bye May, 14 / 07, It is now June and still no resolution, I may soon switch to Sympatico, who is parners with MSN, atleast my MSN acount has been secure, and their chat seams to be relitivly spam free. Just an Idea, fix the problem before you looze more customers, and before your “Partners” get fed up.

Comment by B Gilbert — June 6, 2007 #
ok, everyone I spoke with about this says maybe the USB keys are a bad idea, but they want to boot bots, they want unlimited ignores, and they want a published API so if the clients no longer work, we can add packet filtering so bootcodes no longer work. It is also pretty much the concensus that if you don’t provide solutions that work, we will stop using your service and hit you where it hurts, your ad revenue.

Comment by Mike C. — June 6, 2007 #
here we go… going to fix the bots on the rooms,,, etc etc same song same dance, now you have “closed down adult rooms”… yeah beleive it or not some adults like those room.

well I guess I wll jusr keep on bitching here,,, and emailing all chat ro0om advertisers that they are being boycotted because of yahoo and its managers….. hurt them were it counts in the pocket book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comment by den — June 6, 2007 #
Final thoughts here, the new version of messenger that is supposed to be for Vista, that design is cool, but the current messenger is ugly and the menu stuff is crap. Also, you need to stop making it so we can only have one child window open at a time when it is certain child windows.

WE WOULD RATHER see the preferences open up before the messenger connects. The default settings don’t even come close to being what most users desire – we NEED to be able to change those FIRST, or accept the default settings, knowing what they are. I change 90% of the settings because they do NOT meet my needs/desires.

It would be the best ever messenger if you had a minimal view that was just buddies/launch/flcker and one advertisement (small) that could hover (always on top) and a button that takes it back to full mode.

ADD TRANSPARENCY!!!! EVERYWHERE!!!!

Please do not make the mistake of omitting XP support for a long time to come – XP has 7 more years of support and lots of people refuse to go to Vista until it is at least at SP2.

Comment by Mike C. — June 6, 2007 #
When we gonna see the changes?almost all rooms are filled with damn bots(not the porn bots but those bots put by insane chattres)..

Comment by coolobotz — June 7, 2007 #
the only solutions to Yahoo Chatrooms is to bring back the User created rooms , but give the person who created the room the power to kick people they dont want at all such as bots , dirty old men or perves!

let us be the judge and monitor our own Chat Rooms!

i agree with my Mike C. , if there are booters in the room that started to attack us give us some sort options to deflect it back to the sender! (like an auto-send back)

Comment by Dave — June 7, 2007 #
I really think the only way Yahoo can bring back user rooms is to allow only people with a valid credit card in Yahoo wallet to do so or to try the USB key idea. The problems that existed before make user rooms a real problem, and saying that the room owner needs the power to boot the pervs – what if the room owner is a perv? Real tracking ability is required if it is going to be done, and there are few ways to do so with all the proxies around.

Comment by Mike C. — June 7, 2007 #
Bring back the User Rooms.

Comment by __Shadows — June 7, 2007 #
If you dont give us the power to boot, at the very least give us the power to move people (again, by majority rule, 51+%) who start offtopic debates, chat wars, etc to the fight rooms

Comment by Mike C. — June 7, 2007 #
YMSG12ENCRYPT.dll has been erroring out in my projects allday today. Im now wondering what yahoo are upto…. The rollout of this new chat is very near. If it was not near my VB Projects would not be messing up. I guess its time for a new DLL Upgrade?

Comment by vb_packets — June 7, 2007 #
i hope they get rid of that YMSG12ENCRYPT.dll and update it to a newer version. besides the majority of the programmers who uses that create booters and such.

go go Yahoo Inc go , get rid of all them servers and so

another fine point there Mike C. , great validation ID there too but dont forget such details can be stolen easy too , right?

Comment by Dave — June 7, 2007 #
I’m just tossing out ideas – hopefully some will be found to be workable within the upcoming changes, but lets be honest with ourselves here … Yahoo is only going to do what it needs to. I’d like to see a lot of things done that would never be considered.

Personally, I’d pay (a very small fee) to have the ability to create my own room because I spend a lot of time helping people with computer problems and I don’t conference because I don’t use Y!M. If that was done, I would also want the ability to close the room (and boot ppl out) so I’m not held accountable for the actions of others later.

However, I think the only real way to implement that is with multifactor authentication for all parties and I do know that a USB key/dongle/token isn’t cost effective for yahoo.

Comment by Mike C. — June 7, 2007 #
Authentication can be done by any one of several methods, second group of numbers on one of your credit cards for example (and a notice that if you don’t have one, you have less security than others

Now, keep in mind I’m not saying everyone sign up for yahoo wallet, but if those four digits were stored as securely as yahoo claims your password is, it becomes the “something you have” part of authentication.

Most people are pretty tight with that information – I hope!

Comment by Mike C. — June 7, 2007 #
Very simple

ADD A FREAKING CAPTCHA TO THE CHAT LOGIN PROCESS SOMEWHERE

BINGO, DONE & DONE

Comment by jason — June 7, 2007 #
WOW yahoo..not even a whole month before the yahoo chartroom lag comes back? what the hell do you people do that it is so hard to just make it EASY and accessible to enter the very thing we CHATTERS come on yahoo chat for!

OH and BRING BACK THE DAMN USER ROOMS ALREADY!

Comment by justin M — June 8, 2007 #
Yes VB is back.

Remember my article about all these Exploits Floating in the Yahoo Messenger Pond?

Many Exploits have been captured this week – i have lost count on how many Exploits people did catch..

The Windows Hacking Exploit is still alive and i thought Yahoo would of thought it was serious enough to patch. So whilst we use Yahoo Mssenger its possible our machines could be hacked over night for leaving your Yahoo Messenger / Webcam running.

To avoid this hack. Please go toC:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger and delete ywcvwr.dll and ywcvwr.oca

This means you wont be able to view peoples webcams. You will be able to start your own cam but wont be able to view other peoples cams.

I think its critical enough for you users to delete these 2 files from your system until yahoo can make a new release confirming the update on this blog..

take vb’s advice and delete them 2 files. This will make your system unhackable on Yahoo Instant Messenger.

Files available to hack into Windows Systems:
C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\ywcvwr.dll
C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\ywcvwr.oca

Temp Fix to make your system safe: Delete above files.

Services Effected after deletion:

Viewing Users Webcams

Note: you will need to exit Yahoo Messenger as the files may be in use by someone else or being used by Yahoo Messenger.

Credit me for this fix if you want to post it on other sites.

Comment by vb_packets — June 8, 2007 #
I see mention that we will see less bots however I see no mention that we will see less room fillers..that makes me assume you are just talking about less porn bots or am I wrong?
The room fillers seem to annoy more people than the porn bots…When will yahoo put an end to these?

Comment by Timothy — June 8, 2007 #
Yahoo started the update yesterday. It should not be no longer than June the 15th until they start rolling out the new chat service..

Alot of 3rd party clients are having problems including ALG Programs.

yea its 3 weeks on the 14th so give it until the 15th atleast and you should see some kind of update.

Yesterdays problems could of also been to do with the new services Yahoo was Testing yesterday.

Comment by vb_packets — June 8, 2007 #
NO offense but I’ll believe it when I see it.

I have been using yahoo chat for 10 years and am sad to say in the lats year I have stopped chatting altogether because of all the problems getting in the rooms and the rooms being over taken by bots and my type going invisible once I’m in the room.

If this works someone let me know so I can try chatting once again.

Comment by Jane — June 8, 2007 #
Yahoo just made the messenger YMSG version headers in the packets sent to there chat servers mandatory with the recent update. But that didn’t stop the booters or chat clients they just updated and made there packets send the fake headers thus yahoo allows them to join/login on there servers. If this is how yahoo thinks they can stop the bots and booters then I am afraid we are already done for.

Comment by Rick — June 8, 2007 #
Now Yahoo has released this there is no need to delete those files i posted a few topics above. Yahoo has now fixed the Windows Hack Problem.

Thanks Yahoo

Comment by vb_packets — June 8, 2007 #
Rick while some may have updated that I’m sure there were a lot that didn’t or couldn’t figure it out. You should keep things like that private. Even a few more people in the dark = less bots and booters.

Comment by Adam — June 8, 2007 #
im giving yahoo up until June 15th to kill the bots and 3rd party applications. If June 15th is not the day it happens it means you could be waiting a very long time.

Im sure Mr Vice President wont let us down so keep your fingers crossed.

Should you kill YMSG10? YES
Should you kill YMSG11? YES
Should you kill YMSG12? YES
Should you kill YMSG13? YES
Should you kill YMSG14? YES
Should you kill YMSG15? YES

Should you Release the all new YMSG16 which will be impossible for 3rd partys to connect to? YES YES YES!

If the above is done will 3rd party clients be able to connect to yahoo? NO! Period

If this is done will it effect my ability to enjoy chat on yahoo messenger? No! Certainly Not!

Will the Spam be killed if the above happens!?

Yes Course it will!

Lets just go by these stats ok and see what happens :d

Comment by vb_packets — June 8, 2007 #
Nice idea, except for one thing. Yahoo will not block the clients – they tried before and after a day of pressure, folded like a poker player with a bad hand.

LET US BOOT THE BOTS AND THE ONES WHO COME IN WITH 30 NAMES WHO CARES ABOUT ABUSE OF IT – ITS TIME FOR WHATS BEEN GOING AROUND TO COME AROUND

BOOT
BOOT
BOOT
BOOT THE BOTS AND “DONKEYS” WE WANT THE POWER

Comment by Mike C. — June 8, 2007 #
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FIX THE INVISIBLE PROBLEM THAT HAS BEEN GOING ON NOW IN THE CHAT ROOMS FOR 3.5 YEARS. THE REASON I USE ANOTHER CHAT CLIENT IS SO I CAN SEE WHEN MY INK RUNS OUT OR I WOULD BE PARANOID – TWITCH TWITCH
THANKS

Comment by SammY — June 8, 2007 #
I agree with mike get reed of the the bots but should not give other ppl idea to boot the real ppl eather unless they r try to start a fight. boots r the slowing every one of the computer downs and not just that its hard to get into thwe room that u wants so please get reed of them.

Comment by james — June 9, 2007 #
My god you lot are gullible yahoo will never ever ever fix this if they would why have they not???? wake up there doing this to take the heat off them geez lol

Comment by omgppl — June 9, 2007 #
this is getting old now i can never get in the rooms i hang out in because of stupid people using them room fillers to lock the room,right now yahoo chat sucks

Comment by markj — June 9, 2007 #
OH and i also forgot…BRING BACK THE OPTION TO FOLLOW PEOPLE!

Comment by justin m — June 9, 2007 #
To those who want to get rid of 3rd party chat clients…..if it was not for them, a lot of ppl would NOT use Yahoo chat at all. And I, for one, would be one of those “non” users. The main reason I have to use them is because of all the porn bots in our rooms. Oh sure, in Messenger u can ignore them but let them leave the room and come back and u have to Iggy them yet again. At least in the other chat clients, when u put them on ignore, they stay there until you remove them. I also like to help ppl with some of their problems but the bots are so bad, u cannot keep up a conversation with the person u are trying to help. Who needs all that clogging up your screen…not me. And…the 3rd party chat clients also let you “voice” ignore someone on the mic that uses nasty sex language, cusses all the time or won’t turn off hands-free (hate it when all u can hear is kids fighting, loud TV or coughing), etc. when the mic is being used for other purposes. The ads are also gone but you can get an ad remover to keep all that stuff from making the chat screen so tiny when ads change in Messenger. But why do we have to do so in the first place? Maybe an option to turn it all off?
At least the 3rd client chat programmers got something right or they would not be in use and preferred by a lot of ppl.
Yahoo could learn a lot from those ppl.
LONG LIVE CHAT CLIENTS!!!!

Comment by skeeter — June 9, 2007 #
“To those who want to get rid of 3rd party chat clients…..if it was not for them, a lot of ppl would NOT use Yahoo chat at all. And I, for one, would be one of those “non” users. The main reason I have to use them is because of all the porn bots in our rooms. Oh sure, in Messenger u can ignore them but let them leave the room and come back and u have to Iggy them yet again. At least in the other chat clients, when u put them on ignore, they stay there until you remove them. I also like to help ppl with some of their problems but the bots are so bad, u cannot keep up a conversation with the person u are trying to help. Who needs all that clogging up your screen…not me. And…the 3rd party chat clients also let you “voice” ignore someone on the mic that uses nasty sex language, cusses all the time or won’t turn off hands-free (hate it when all u can hear is kids fighting, loud TV or coughing), etc. when the mic is being used for other purposes. The ads are also gone but you can get an ad remover to keep all that stuff from making the chat screen so tiny when ads change in Messenger. But why do we have to do so in the first place? Maybe an option to turn it all off?
At least the 3rd client chat programmers got something right or they would not be in use and preferred by a lot of ppl.
Yahoo could learn a lot from those ppl.
LONG LIVE CHAT CLIENTS!!!!”

Yes they need make msgr’s chat more competitive and work more like yahelite, yazak, etc. There are some good ideas in those alternatives that they need to explore integrating into msgr itself. And there is another open source one most of you probably haven’t heard of–GAIM. It has support for not just yahoo, but AIM, ICQ, IRC, yahoo, etc. And you can use them all simultaneously with tabbed chat room browsing even. BTW it comes pre-instaleld with ubuntu linux 7.04 : )
Now if this report from Jeff is true and they ARE finally taking action–then that’s great. They need to follow through on it and also the same with their msgr product.
And as already mentioned above, it’s the EXPLOITS you still have and allow to be used at yahoo that made people turn away from msgr in the first place–be it an exploit or flaw in msgr or a server side exploit/back door, etc etc. Exploits like “stealing someones voice chat cookie”, abusing the voice chat by programs like yah-vox, etc (that’s a programs allow multiple connections to their voice chat servers and they allow someone with properly a properly configured system/program to have seemingly indefinate time on the mic–you can see what kind of abuse that will lead to right?)

So all of that is great news..BUT…there is still no mention of the exploits involving booting. This is still a problem. You need to address this finally. Only yahoo themselves should be allowed to “disconnect” another user–be it in a chat room or on messenger with an IM. But that’s not the case and this booting problem persists. Setting the preferences to “ignore people not in your list” doesn’t help..its the fact that yahoo sends back data to users, that is initiated by the “booter” and boot programs. And even if setting ignore anyone on your list 100% prevented it (which it currently doesn’t, although should), that presents another problem in how do you contact someone without letting your guard down? Perhaps you wanted to be able to receive an IM from someone or vice-versa, without them being on your list? (example–initial contact for a friend or going on a date through yahoo personal or whatever). If you allow IMS from anyone, sooner or later (and most people have seen this), you get “pm bombed”. That’s very annoying. Surely something can be done with that as well–I mean what are the chances that any legitimate pm from an actual person with non-malicious intent, would be able to send all that crap typing that fast? None–only bots and booter/bomber programs can do it.
So yahoo, clean up those last two things and consider some of those features in the non-msgr programs like yahelite, yazak, and esp. GAIM (which kicks butt), and you will have a great system as it should be–for all to enjoy without having to live in fear of idiots abusing it.

Comment by Make yahoo bot moderators!! — June 10, 2007 #
“To those who want to get rid of 3rd party chat clients…..if it was not for them, a lot of ppl would NOT use Yahoo chat at all. And I, for one, would be one of those “non” users. The main reason I have to use them is because of all the porn bots in our rooms. Oh sure, in Messenger u can ignore them but let them leave the room and come back and u have to Iggy them yet again. At least in the other chat clients, when u put them on ignore, they stay there until you remove them. I also like to help ppl with some of their problems but the bots are so bad, u cannot keep up a conversation with the person u are trying to help. Who needs all that clogging up your screen…not me. And…the 3rd party chat clients also let you “voice” ignore someone on the mic that uses nasty sex language, cusses all the time or won’t turn off hands-free (hate it when all u can hear is kids fighting, loud TV or coughing), etc. when the mic is being used for other purposes. The ads are also gone but you can get an ad remover to keep all that stuff from making the chat screen so tiny when ads change in Messenger. But why do we have to do so in the first place? Maybe an option to turn it all off?
At least the 3rd client chat programmers got something right or they would not be in use and preferred by a lot of ppl.
Yahoo could learn a lot from those ppl.
LONG LIVE CHAT CLIENTS!!!!”

Yes they need make msgr’s chat more competitive and work more like yahelite, yazak, etc. There are some good ideas in those alternatives that they need to explore integrating into msgr itself. And there is another open source one most of you probably haven’t heard of–GAIM. It has support for not just yahoo, but AIM, ICQ, IRC, yahoo, etc. And you can use them all simultaneously with tabbed chat room browsing even. BTW it comes pre-instaleld with ubuntu linux 7.04 : )
Now if this report from Jeff is true and they ARE finally taking action–then that’s great. They need to follow through on it and also the same with their msgr product.
And as already mentioned above, it’s the EXPLOITS you still have and allow to be used at yahoo that made people turn away from msgr in the first place–be it an exploit or flaw in msgr or a server side exploit/back door, etc etc. Exploits like “stealing someones voice chat cookie”, abusing the voice chat by programs like yah-vox, etc (that’s a programs allow multiple connections to their voice chat servers and they allow someone with properly a properly configured system/program to have seemingly indefinate time on the mic–you can see what kind of abuse that will lead to right?)

So all of that is great news..BUT…there is still no mention of the exploits involving booting. This is still a problem. You need to address this finally. Only yahoo themselves should be allowed to “disconnect” another user–be it in a chat room or on messenger with an IM. But that’s not the case and this booting problem persists. Setting the preferences to “ignore people not in your list” doesn’t help..its the fact that yahoo sends back data to users, that is initiated by the “booter” and boot programs. And even if setting ignore anyone on your list 100% prevented it (which it currently doesn’t, although should), that presents another problem in how do you contact someone without letting your guard down? Perhaps you wanted to be able to receive an IM from someone or vice-versa, without them being on your list? (example–initial contact for a friend or going on a date through yahoo personal or whatever). If you allow IMS from anyone, sooner or later (and most people have seen this), you get “pm bombed”. That’s very annoying. Surely something can be done with that as well–I mean what are the chances that any legitimate pm from an actual person with non-malicious intent, would be able to send all that crap typing that fast? None–only bots and booter/bomber programs can do it.
So yahoo, clean up those last two things and consider some of those features in the non-msgr programs like yahelite, yazak, and esp. GAIM (which kicks butt), and you will have a great system as it should be–for all to enjoy without having to live in fear of idiots abusing it.

PS..and yes, consider some type of PM/BOT yahoo chat moderators. That would be something simple to implement.

Comment by Make yahoo bot moderators!! — June 10, 2007 #
“Dave Yahoo is all about selling and making money anyway. It would be nice to have admins in chat they theirselves will then realise how unsafe it is and how exploitable their chat servers are.

Having that Protection is a idea. The Admins dont have to be visible in the room btw. They probably in chat anyway under ghost id’s

I remember years ago when you joined the chatrooms the Yahoo cs server also joined the room as a user so dont think Yahoo are not already in the rooms watching and monitoring our Activity.

Its less than 2 weeks now until Yahoo start rolling out this new Chat Service. Thats if Yahoo Inc are still on track of things and are not getting delayed. They should be ontime because they have been testing the new chat for some time now ive been monitoring it for several days. ”

As I posted on another blog comment already, they should have at the VERY LEAST, some type of PM/BOTS in the chat rooms (official yahoo bots like yahoo helper was intended), which could serve as a liason of sorts to a real person, when necessary.
Say if there was abuse, people using exploits (actually they fix allt he exploits finally, but until that is done…), etc. etc.. If enough people sent a pm to this official yahoo room/operator bot, it could result in an escalation–basically notify someone that something is going on and they need to visit the room and see what is up. I realize they may not have the resources/time to do that, but that’s why the “bot” idea–only notify a real person when it’s absolutely necessary (granted it currently seems absolutely necessary a lot of the time in many of their rooms).
But this is something that should be relatively easy to implement. Then when there are problems, someone could come in or could post an official message into the room, etc. to let everyone know they may intervene. Yahoo knows and already has a disclaimer about recording IP addresses–so idea of moderation in combination with that should act as a good deterrent. Some people don’t like the idea of any kind of moderation, but without it and the still existing exploits, witness the result!
And if yahoo ever actually does plan to improve their chat even further and begin charging a minimal fee, they will almost have to have some type of moderation like this (as well as fix the exploits finally)–because paying customers won’t tolerate being abused and paying for crappy services.

Comment by Make yahoo bot moderators!! — June 10, 2007 #
You guys are kidding yourself if you think there is ANY chance of moderators in chat ”a very small number of them work on our chat rooms; in fact you can count them on one hand.” Thats how much yahoo cares about its rooms did you miss that bit? Yahoo earns millions of dollars there intrests are not the freeware chat thats for shure they do not even have a decent support system its a series of automated emails and you think they will moderate chat LOL.

Comment by Karl — June 10, 2007 #
Oh and if yahoo ever charged you think chats dead now…. lol why pay for yahoo when you can have paltalk? i would never pay for this service and thousands would not advertisers would be forced to pull out you can not have ads all over a paid version it defies the point.

Comment by Karl — June 10, 2007 #
“Oh and if yahoo ever charged you think chats dead now…. lol why pay for yahoo when you can have paltalk? i would never pay for this service and thousands would not advertisers would be forced to pull out you can not have ads all over a paid version it defies the point.”

Well if they WERE going to charge–hypothetically speaking–then having some kind of moderation would be absolutely required. All pay sites have to implement some kind of measures to protect the customers. And of course there wouldn’t be ads in a paid version–duh, it would probably be something like it is now–you pay a small fee and get no ads and increased features. And Pal talk as a comparison? lol That is hardly much better than yahoo chat. I’ve used it and it’s crapola–and full of perverts as well. Second Life would be a much better choice to spend your $ on than paltalk.

“You guys are kidding yourself if you think there is ANY chance of moderators in chat ”a very small number of them work on our chat rooms; in fact you can count them on one hand.” Thats how much yahoo cares about its rooms did you miss that bit? Yahoo earns millions of dollars there intrests are not the freeware chat thats for shure they do not even have a decent support system its a series of automated emails and you think they will moderate chat LOL.”

No I didn’t miss that bit–but without moderation, what do you have now? The state of it still sucks. Yeah they don’t have good support, etc.–that was the whole point–to finally take measures to actually provide it! Hey if they actually don’t care–then so be it and they might as well close it altogether then, because free or paid, with the other alternatives out there now, why should anyone care to chat on yahoo if it continues like it has? The point was really, they need to do something to improve it. Improve it or lose it I say–there are other alternatives out there now.

Comment by Make yahoo bot moderators!! — June 10, 2007 #
Karl, the rooms are dead because of the bots.

“Bot Moderators” look like a good idea on the surface, but lets be honest here – if you have to rely on someone being there 24/7 to boot bots and room fillers, Yahoo would have to hire 5-7 people to be available for that because it would be a full time job. On top of that, if everyone in a room suspects that a username is an individual they dont like – they sound like a previous room filler, for example – a person who isn’t guilty of anything could potentially be banned. Think that doesn’t happen? Check out Yahoo! Answers.

I agree with Mike C’s suggestions. Give the users the power to boot a person out of a room. If they choose to come back to chat, I doubt they would go back to the same room.

If you really want to automate this somehow, then have a bot take reports from users in a room, but have a bot in each room and have it announce its purpose there once per hour, with basic instructions for how it works. Some people might not agree with majority rule, so if you have to go with a higher percentage, keep in mind that a room filler can make that higher percentage work to their advantage.

Something has to be done. I am waiting to see exactly what does happen. Will Yahoo do the right thing? We can only wait and see. I do hope the solutions actually work. I am more interested in seeing results than effort.

As far as exploits within the system, Make yahoo bot moderators!! is really onto something. The number of exploits available is huge. If you aren’t booted, your voice cookie gets taken and if that wasn’t bad enough, Yahoo still lets their servers communicate cross-domain, which is unacceptable. I realise this is out of the realm of messenger, but it is a peripheral issue relating to user accounts. Stop letting geocities sites use cross-site scripting to create bogus login pages to steal user accounts. Yahoo! Chat Help regulars are simply tired of seeing people come in complaining about how their account was stolen. The cross-site scripting is a super-sized problem.

One other thing you can do is to remove the ability to redirect from geocities sites. It will cut down on the porn and the spam sites. It might take a little bit of work, but you can add a delay to the redirect and make the spamming and porn selling less profitable for those who do these things.

Years ago, Yahoo was a decent place to come and meet people. Today, a new user comes in and there is about a two day adjustment period to figuring out what a bot is, typical things a bot says, etc. Then there is the chance that their account will get stolen. Is this the main selling point of Yahoo? Think about it. Why in the world would anyone want to claim they still have a user account on your service?

“Yeah, I have a Yahoo (and they think porn, spam, bots, abuse with no TOS enforcement, hackers paradise, etc) account.” My having a Yahoo account is a liability, not an asset. Everything you can do to change that is a step in the right direction.

Oh, and can someone explain to me why we have a three+ month wait on a Messenger for Vista? That works. With voice. Take your time – oh wait, you ARE!

Comment by Wayne — June 10, 2007 #
Also, I believe Mike C is right about the IP addresses, if they are used for something other than marketing I would be shocked to learn of the real use!

Comment by Wayne — June 10, 2007 #
Its already summer. Any date on new mac beta? I hope its has video voice chat.

Comment by Hemen — June 11, 2007 #
Yes that is part of the reason most yahoo chat rooms are dead due to the HUGE amount of Spam but a lot of people are sick of kids with booters people who use voice domination on there yahoo power trip and just getting abused by people yes bot moderation would stop this but it will never happen its not like you can even ignore the people
since yahoo only allow 100 ignored users why cant they be saved in the yahoo directory instead of remotely like the buddy list is limited to a few hundred also chat clients have managed this made by for example yaheh even y tunnel allows an unlimited ignore list not that i use that. it seems the latest versions include more plug ins more load that a lot of people do not want. A light version of messenger would be cool without all the useless (in my opinion) features. Anyone noticed the MASSIVE amount of spam via yahoo email lately? and no i don’t sign up to anything with my yahoo email i get at least 30 a day its sooooo annoying i understand its free ware but damn so is Gmail and that is leaps and bounds ahead of yahoo mail hardly any spam and its a lot newer than this if Google talk ever gets chat rooms it will be bad ass! anyways the room delay is back after 3weeks…… lol got to laugh
#
Years ago, Yahoo was a decent place to come and meet people. Today, a new user comes in and there is about a two day adjustment period to figuring out what a bot is, typical things a bot says, etc. Then there is the chance that their account will get stolen. Is this the main selling point of Yahoo? Think about it. Why in the world would anyone want to claim they still have a user account on your service?
#
Totally agree with you i used to enjoy chat a lot it was good fun when im bored now though yahoo is known as yahell im sure thousands have thought along the lines of hell if they cant answer my chat questions how will i get support for my geocities site well yahoo have imposted ”anti phishing techniques” they are laughable though using simple HTML and javascript you can steal anyones yahoo id using a form and cgi mail notification but there we go.

Comment by Karl — June 12, 2007 #
I have spent the last 30 minutes or so reading all the previous posts and have noticed a few things. Yahoo using chat client technology/ideas for their own would be an excelent move, I like the functionality of them as they are nicer to use than the regular chat thru messy. I remember back in the day of YCHT and user rooms, there weren’t alot of bots and booters( i.e. the room boot) because those people mostly stayed in the user rooms. there was alot more peace in chat.I’m not sayin there weren’t alot of bots in th rooms, but they were easily ignored. In the room i frequent someone usually has a trivia bot running in it, which DOES keep the peace!!! There are always alot of people coming into our room to start trouble, and eventually they start playing the trivia to. I feel back then, the problems were less frequent. the YCHT protocol was hard to boot, and the user rooms kept the trouble starters to themselves. If Yahoo would follow up more on the reported names and worry less about all the other stupid stuff, it would make for a better chatting experience.

Comment by photo — June 12, 2007 #
Yahoo really should consider dropping the advertisements anyway… c’mon.. it’s flash or java based.. always has been… always will be.. embedded flash crap = weak point.. once again, always has been, always will be.

BTW too, whoever said Ubuntu Feisty comes with Gaim, well, I have a copy of Kubuntu and it comes with Kopete, the msgr only version of Gaim… and you have to install your own chat client…. yes, I said “Client…” b/c we all know that messenger sux on linux anyway.

On the plus side, Messenger has also gone browser based.. so if you only want messenger in linux, you can install that ever so unsafe flash player plugin for your browser… and use it browser based.

But like my good friend “kaoticevil” said, work on the linux client for messenger… please god, work on the darn messenger..

As far as third party clients.. I know for fact that some of those clients are crap… I know ppl that have worked on them.. I know how some of them operate.. I personally used YahElite by DeepThawt when I was on Windows, now that I’m using Linux full time, I use Pidgin.. since Gaim no longer exists. It has been reported by the creator of Y!mLite himself, (Craig.su, for those who don’t know) several times that the client has a trojan built in, and possibly a keylogger as well… so you might consider researching what you’re using before you use it…
Most of the security issues with Yahoo are the same as with any other chat service.. it all boils down to “PEBKAC” (Problem exists between keyboard and chair) Not enough users are willing to educate themselves about the products and/or services they’re using.

Unfortunately, Yahoo can’t fix user stupidity.. instead, they charge you for being stupid.. and let’s be honest… how many ppl really click on those stupid ads anyway?

Comment by Digi.Christ — June 12, 2007 #
I don’t use 3rd party clients but i was told that David Binette the Author of Yahelite has a trojan

I just came to this group because I don’t see an area where I can contact yahelite. I downloaded the free version the other day and came up with a virus. C:\Program Files\YahELite\_YHLTNS.TSK File infected with “W32/Threat-HLLSI-based!Maximus” virus and was successfully deleted. This virus is very harmful if you don’t catch it right away. My antivirus caught it but couldn’t delete it until my next reboot of my computer and when I rebooted, it wormed its way into my system files. Just use caution when trying to download the free version.

This trojan is harmful to your computer, people should be away of DeepThawt or “David Binette” because he’s infecting a LOT of people…

So do your research before you use yahelite by deepthawt, otherwise you could regret it.

Comment by animositty — June 12, 2007 #
“Yahelite has a trojan”

YHLTNS.TSK has been around a long long time and helps the client run faster. If you download the program from the correct website or mirrors from that website you will get a virus free piece of software.

W32/Threat-HLLSI-based!Maximus is a back door trojan. A number of Anti Virus packages pick up .exe files and other associated files/applications as false positives.

In the words of Mr Binette himself…
“YHLTNS.TSK is a performance enhancement add-on for YahELite
YahELite will function OK without it.
It is 1536 bytes in size and shows in windows file manager as 2K bytes.
i think it has only been changed a couple of times since i created it so there might
be a version with a slightly different size.
Its not a virus when it leaves home, please be kind to it, it is your friend.”

I would not doubt that the file is clean from the proper sources. How many backdoors would a professional programmer really want out there? Its more likely if it is a virus proper that it originated from another source.

Comment by spite.fu — June 13, 2007 #
Yahelete is not a trojan LOL anti virus detects ONLY the things they know there viri signature or md5 match so if it was a trojan it would not be detected anyway. I would not call deepthawt a professional programer though if he was why would he even bother with yahell seriously

Comment by LOL — June 13, 2007 #
Y!mLite’s clean as well, in all my years in yahoo chat i’ve only seen yeleet users bash ymlite and not one of them knows why if youre going to libel someone at least have the guts to show proof…

I don’t trust yahelite as far as i could throw it, yahoo messenger works, i use that, if it’s not a yahoo authorized client then don’t use it, but y!mlite is clean i’ve known people who have been using it for years, just not my cup of tea id watch your mouth if i were you.

Scan Virus Everything.
Use your brain, it helps.

Comment by Yazak — June 13, 2007 #
Craig is the one who actually made the post above that is attributed to http://www.ourchat.org and animositty. You should block his client if anything. He said he made the post and attributed it to others to prove anyone could say anything here. I say you stop allowing comments here and anyone who has decent suggestions and a valid email start contacting them and picking their brains.

ROTF @ chat client wars on Y!M Blog. How mature can these programmers be? If you have to get rid of the clients altogether because of one person, I’m sure a lot of people will understand your decision and respect it.

NOTE TO CRAIG: Impersonating other people on yahoo is a violation of the TOS, and I hope they prosecute you for it to show you what they think of your childish games.

Comment by Wayne — June 13, 2007 #
Oh, and I hope that Y!M employees see why some are asking for some type of moderation. The comments above are prime examples of what passes for conversation in the chatrooms on this subject. One programmer says anothers client is trojaned, etc. The next one comes along and makes what seems a well intentioned comment and then says I only use messenger, or suggests only using messenger. Can you block these jerks? Permanently?

[YAHOO ID's REMOVED]

and the rest of them that are even associated with client software, including those who currently (and former if necessary) host them? It would make the chat more peaceful and we woudn’t have these silly so-called debates over meaningless issues. Almost every single one of these people is an out of control, immature child stuck in the body of an adult and the comments here so far prove it beyond any doubt.

Or let us boot them

Comment by Wayne — June 13, 2007 #
What I don’t really understand is why Yahoo always had more than one way to chat, and now has gone to messenger and the YMSG protocol only. There should be more than one choice for those who don’t like messenger and we should not have to rely on third party software and the chance that it does have a trojan or keylogger.

With regard to giving user the opportunity to boot others, I think that is probably the worst idea anyone has ever had. I can think of ten people without even trying who would boot me every chance they got, simply because I am my sisters brother and not due to something I have ever said or done.

I’ve been on Yahoo for over ten years – I think that qualifies me to be a user moderator and I would only boot people if given the opportunity to hang em high once they grabbed enough “rope for self-hanging” to prove it was a legitimate action and not based on some pointless argument. I doubt few others could make that claim, nor follow through on it.

Anyone you place in moderator status or the equivilent, I feel you should hold to a higher standard of accountability.

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — June 13, 2007 #
June 13 and Yahoo chat is still a wreck. Haven’t tried to use it in months and I found this blog so I thought I’d see what changed. Looks the same to me. Sometimes I can get into chat and sometimes it just hangs. When I do finally get in I can’t switch rooms. And the place is still crawling with bots. Whenever I just open my yahoo client there are usually 5-10 offline porn messages waiting for me. Nice product, every kid should use it.

Yahoo has been like this for years and I see nothing but promises on some blog towards an effort to fix it so forgive my skepticism.. I have been on yahoo since 2000 and nobody will be happier than me if all this is true but… I’ll believe this when I see it.

Comment by eddieK — June 13, 2007 #
“Yahelete is not a trojan LOL anti virus detects ONLY the things they know there viri signature or md5 match so if it was a trojan it would not be detected anyway. I would not call deepthawt a professional programer though if he was why would he even bother with yahell seriously”

I’m afraid you are wrong. Some AV software do detect false positives. If you source the internet for info on W32/Threat-HLLSI-based!Maximus you will see that it is described as a trojan.

On Senor Binette he is a professional programer. That’s his job and chosen career. I did not state that he made a living out of YahELite. His resume is located on the YahELite website.

As for CJ or Craig he’s another talented coder. And yes a certain amount of bickering and damning of one client to another takes place, as it does with many rival “products” in this world.

” Can you block these jerks? Permanently?

yazakchat
deepthawt
craig.su

and the rest of them that are even associated with client software, including those who currently (and former if necessary) host them? It would make the chat more peaceful and we woudn’t have these silly so-called debates over meaningless issues. Almost every single one of these people is an out of control, immature child stuck in the body of an adult and the comments here so far prove it beyond any doubt.

Or let us boot them” …so who is the child?

Third party chat clients do not promote war in chat. People do that all on their own. The purposes of 3rd party clients are multiple. Better safeguard against booters, spam filters and more customisable bot filtering among others. For me they enhance the chat experience.

Its a free world. I wouldn’t recommend anyone to use any particular program. Yahoo Messenger does the job its set out to do. But why ban the authors of 3rd party clients? I’d rather Yahoo banned users who’s IP addresses log in more that 100 IDs at a time for example. Room floods, booters and voice laggers are much more of a nuisance in real terms.

Enjoy the continued debate.

Comment by spite.fu — June 14, 2007 #
I’m in agreement with Wayne that the comments above demonstrate a need for some type of moderation, or at the minimum some way other than a useless ignore “function” to remove those who insist that their view is soooooooooo right and everyone else is so wrong. Ever hear of an opinion folks? If you don’t like that someone believes different than you, don’t mock them (no matter now “fun” it seems), sometimes you have to agree to disagree. That might be hard for some of you who don’t have the freedom (or ability!) to think for yourself.

I’m also thinking that would be an interesting backtrace on the IP that has the name spite.fu, and I bet you don’t live anywhere near that country code, do you? Yet another Yahoo exploit, thanks for pointing it out to them. I’m sure they appreciate your input, even if it is only that one bit of info gt;

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — June 14, 2007 #
Which country code? If its any interest to you I use a US profile format to be able to use a nickname. Its not an exploit, Yahoo allows you to do this on your account settings. But I’m not sure what this has to do with the state of the union?

Moderators would be good I agree. How they would achieve this on a free service I’m not sure. Volunteers could work sometimes but you always get individuals that are over zealous with their new found power. Dealing with booters is one thing, at least you can afford some protection with them, but the ability to disconnect users at the discretion of an appointed moderator who may have a personal vendetta or the inability to remain impartial could cause more harm than good.

With regards to arguments and persons that refuse to admit that the world is shades of grey and not just black and white, and that they and you could both be correct, I agree it is annoying. However, I find ignore is just about as good as you need. By “removing” them are you not removing their freedom of speech? No matter how ridiculous their speech may be.

I, and many others, find the more “underground” activities such as booting and room floods etc more of an annoyance than a single individual with a bit of attitude. Yahoo would do well to clamp down more on these activities in the first instance.

Comment by spite.fu — June 15, 2007 #
WHY DO YAHOO LET HACKERS GET INTO COMPUTER FROM VOICE AND DELETE MY FILES TO MAKE ME REINSTALL WINDOWS? I NOT USEING YAHOO ANYMORE THANKS FOR THE MAKING FRIENDS AND THEN HACKING COMPUTER. I LOOK ON INTERNET AND FIND PROBLEMS WITH YAHOO STOP USEING IT IF YOU NEED NO MORE PROBLEM FROM HACKER

Comment by Lance — June 15, 2007 #
hmmmmm school must be out i went into the fight rooms and kids are in the fight rooms,yahoo needs to do something about that,but yahoo dont care,and thats a shame.

Comment by markj — June 16, 2007 #
the bots are still on yahoo chat and the disconnections by malicious hackers are still continuing.

whatever you updated wasn’t enough this time.

yahoo, you fail at life.

n3td3v

Comment by n3td3v — June 17, 2007 #
June 17th….almost a full month after this blog was posted…still crap chat. Now, I cannot even get into chat rooms. Any chat rooms. At all. Wow, good update, folks!

Comment by Nicole — June 17, 2007 #
looks like everyone agrees that it does – where is everyone going?

Comment by does yahoo suck? — June 17, 2007 #
I moved this post here on request from Sarah Bacon. I changed it a little..

sorry for shouting but hey…

YAHOO I AM GETTING SICK OF THE TIME IT TAKES TO GET INTO A CHATROOM. YOU SAID THAT THESE PROBLEMS WAS GOING TO BE FIXED ON MAY 14TH 2007

letter from yahoo regarding the chats was..

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Messenger.

We understand that you are unable to enter chat rooms through
Yahoo! Messenger. We do realize the inconvenience and
empathize for your present situation.

We are currently aware users may experience slow load times
when trying to access or communicate in Yahoo! Chat. These
issues may be intermittent, allowing access to Yahoo! Chat on
some occasions, and on others return the message “Signing
into Chat took longer than expected” or “request refused.”
Our engineering teams are currently investigating an issue
with the Yahoo! Chat servers and working on a resolution.

Unfortunately, we do not expect that this issue will be
resolved until 14 May 2007. We are aware Yahoo! Chat is
important to you, and we want to make sure this issue is
resolved correctly.
We apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused and
appreciate your patience and understanding while we work to
resolve this issue.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Messenger.

———-

Now why have you not fixed the chatrooms you said to us you was going to fix them by that date! why have you not fixed them?

Ummm and why have we not yet seen this new chat rollout. I was told by a friend that you have already pushed out the service which is not true. The only changes i noticed was when you modyfied the servers. Yet in this time theres new 3rd party Yahoo Chat Clients out but why?

I hope a change will be seen very soon because i am getting at the tip of my patience now!!

I am currently not enjoying a good chat experience and umm yea… thats what else i was going to mention. You seem to be DROPPING alot of PACKETS lately. This is the problem with chats because of that. You are dropping too many bluddy packets!.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!!!! I dont have to ask again is all i am asking for is a good chat experience! is that much to ask for and in a good manor i will ask you kindly to please fix the problems asap instead of fucusing on lamers on the internet posting new EXPLOITS they discovered in your messenger client. Non Priority List.. Maybe you could put that together and throw the lamers one side of the list who have posted Yahoo Messenger Exploits which they want patching which are non priority tasks.

Now! Regarding this Blogger.

Was it Sarah Bacon whom posted that the Project has been dropped for the Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista or was it someone else claiming to be Sarah Bacon.

I come to this blog every day and i dont see nothing new just the same problems and hassel. I feel like banging my head up against a brick wall. Please can you do us a favor and fix all these problems once and for all.

Yes we want to see more of a Service from Yahoo Inc. Think Business and think Yahoo Instant Messenger.

i bet all my comments once again will be ignored like they always have done. From DAY 1 yahoo have done nothing but pick on me and trying to sew me. Sew someone who has got the money and a company because i aint im just a Regular Messenger Chatter.

please dont ignore me Yahoo Team

ps – i see sarah is taking notice of my posts thanks.

I know you probably got to go through the legal departments first before you can post on a update on the vista yahoo messenger but thats fine i can wait.

Also would it be worth Yahoo rebooting the CS Servers 1-60? i doubt that because its nothing to so with Traffic on the Server its just the Paclet Dropping problem you got over there..

Drop the 3rd party chat clients. Not Packets in the Real Yahoo Instant Messenger.

anyway im still looking forward to this new chat. I believe its now 5 days until it starts getting rolled out. I thought it was 3 weeks but its 4.

Comment by vb_packets — June 18, 2007 #
YAHOO MOVE YOU TO ARCHIVE WHERE COMPLAINT NOT BE SEEN YAHOO HIDER AND LET HACKER IN FOR NO CONNECT TO YAHOO AND WHEN HAPPEN YOU NO LEAVEING BUT WITH HACKER INSIDE

Comment by Lance — June 18, 2007 #
Mike C is onto something with the USB token idea but I think it can be done in an even easier way. Why not have serial numbers for Y!M and a GUID associated with it (along with a MD5 sig and matching at the time the file is executed plus every few minutes). This would allow you to easily identify who is doing what. You could even store the GUID and MD5 on the server and use it to prevent yahoo accounts being stolen. This in conjunction with asking if we want to provide credit card number (a third method of authentication) could cut down on many of the problems IMHO.

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — June 19, 2007 #
I have moved to paltalk. The rooms are moderated and there are absolutely no bots. They are serious about keeping it annoyance free and you will get kicked out of a room for being an ass. You will never get booted for showing your ass though…and they do… bigtime…lol

It costs $35 (or something like that) per year but it is worth it. Free access is available but its crippled on the video side and you get a lot of ads.

The downside is it is geared towards video chat so if you don’t have a cam people tend to ignore you.

The upside is there is no pleading to view a cam. All cams are open for everyone to see and you can’t tell who is viewing you.

Comment by eddieK — June 19, 2007 #
If you’ve implemented ANY code whatsoever, I wanted you to know that it has already been exploited. I’ll come back at the end of the month and see if you’ve bothered to block bootcodes yet

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — June 19, 2007 #
get the booter gone to that will help alot glad u finally doing something.

Comment by james — June 19, 2007 #
“Yes that is part of the reason most yahoo chat rooms are dead due to the HUGE amount of Spam but a lot of people are sick of kids with booters people who use voice domination on there yahoo power trip and just getting abused by people yes bot moderation would stop this but it will never happen its not like you can even ignore the people”

Talking about voice dominiation–just saw this typed into a politics room (politics lobby:23) (read below please):

all_crazy_lunatics_unite: i dont iggy i harrass an intimidate

all_crazy_lunatics_unite: i could lock th mic and play 9 minutes of cartman quotes if you would like lol

http://www.Greg: i could lock th mic and play 9 minutes of cartman quotes if you would like lol
–
I have seen (rather heard) this character “bragging” about this before as well, making himself out to be some kind of “HERO” or “God” of the chat room–sad and pathetic. And there are plenty more (this is just one person–actually using two perhaps more names at once in the chat room, with no doubt plenty loaded up on a voice chat).
See people (and yahoo/Jeff Bonforte)–it’s this kind of very thing that you need to correct, and you won’t do it. It’s people like this that create an unpleasant experience for others. Why should anyone want to go into a chat room and have to be open up to abused by someone like this, even if the chat room is still free? Using ignore doesn’t work either. Stop telling people in your generic/form responses to people’s compllaint to “use their ignore feature”–you know it doesn’t work correctly with these exploits.
As for the suggestion about giving so called “booting powers” to people–wtf? Are you nuts? That just compounds the problem even worse. If you or joe blow can kick someone out–imagine what people like this character above with fast connections can do? Wreak havoc, that’s what. So that’s not the answer–if anything, they need (as mentioned above and 1000 billion times already), to remove the “booting” altogether.
In fact the way it is now–yahoo can be used as a weapon for almost a dos attack on your computer. Someone on a very fast connection with only a few “names” (or very fast broadband with perhaps 100’s of names), can bombard someone’s yahoo user id/name, be it in a chat room or just sitting on messenger, with tons of extraneous packets–EVEN IF THE USER HAS THEIR IGNORE LIST SET TO IGNORE EVERYONE! Because they don’t properly filter on the persons ignore list. Does this make sense? No of course not. And it should be considered a malicious attack because someone only has so much bandwidth–if someone wants to, they could literally slow down your internet connection–using yahoo’s servers as a proxy. All because of this booting/exploit stuff that remains unpatched for years. With more and more people getting a broadband connection these days it becomes even more critical and Jeff you will be doing yourself a big favor if you can at least, if nothing else, fix this and this so called “voice dominiation” issues that remain in the chat rooms.

Perhaps if at least these most serious exploits that remain could finally be addressed, there wouldn’t be as great a need for moderation. Don’t give people a “weapon” to fight back–that isn’t even rational. Make it work correctly so people can be protected from abuse and exploits.

Comment by Make yahoo bot moderators!! — June 19, 2007 #
It doesnt matter what yahoo does, there will still be exploits…some will be found, some may not be found…but the point is, that they will always be there. And to all the people whining about 3rd party yahoo programs, these are handy in that they let you accomplish many things that messenger wont. They let you customize filtering. For instance, I could put in strings and regular expressions that warded off many of the spam bots.
Also, the booting is not just random…Most of the people that get booted, deserve to be booted…If you come into a chat room acting like a moron, expect to be removed. I think its a good thing to be able to control the riff raff. But dont take it to the darkside Luke…
But on the other side of that, if you had your crap set up right to begin with, you wouldnt be booted. If you wouldnt click on links in the chat room and login to a geocities page, you wouldnt get your names stolen…If you created better passwords, you wouldnt have your accounts cracked. If you would ignore the people that are undesirable, you wont see them…you wont hear them…Its that simple…
And you havent even scratched the surface with voice domination. What about deactivating screen-names, Room Lockers, Fake logins on geocities, Info Crackers and much more bullshit. There is alot of work to be done. It seems to me, that Yahoo should have a little hack party with some of its users that code and see what a third party can bring to the table. They have already opened up their api’s for developers, why not for chat as well.
Yahoo cant address all all of its users issues with it chat service. As a long time chatter, and software developer, I can see things that need to be changed…Simple things…But yahoo chooses to ignore its customer support emails. And when you call them about a problem, they tend to not listen…AT ALL…But hey…SO WHAT…Its a free service, what do you expect? I mean I guess they could start charging.
And as far as bots, Its funny that half of the bots say they are from sunnydale…And yahoo says that you can count their chat developers on one hand…What a bunch of crap…Maybe you should ummmm…hire someone….
Anyway, Im done ranting….
Peace…

Comment by JohnnyO — June 20, 2007 #
You can hardly expect Joe user to have to worry about “creating better passwords” so that their accounts won’t get “cracked”. Why should someone have to worry about this–free or not? If it’s so easy to crack a yahoo account, then that’s yahoo’s bad and they need to make it safer. You think that’s the users responsiblity? Of course the average user isn’t going to know or care about a strong password–they’re going to use something simple and easy to remember–that doesn’t mean they deserve their account to be cracked (possibly allowing their emails to be read as well) and yahoo should be making it so it automatically forces them to create a stronger password.
And yeah there are obviously more exploits and blah blah blah, but no one deserves to be “booted” by anyone, except yahoo themselves. I’m sorry, but that’s how it should be. It’s a chat–people are going to act silly. That’s why the ignore should work and some kind of moderation should be used or implemented so it doesn’t get out of hand. If you take away cops on the street, tell me what happens? The point being–no moderation and exploits–crap. Some moderation and fixing things–better/safer. Which do you prefer? It’s as simple as that. And whether it’s free or not is irrelevant–that doesn’t remove responsiblity from yahoo. They got sued already over their “free” user chat rooms!
And no, you can set all your preferences to “ignore everyone or all but your buddy list”, ignore chat invitations, and etc etc.. and you can still be booted. Yahoo themselves makes it possible by echoing data back at your very own yahoo user id. It will make it more difficult yes, but if someone with the right bandwidth and program wants you to, they can force yahoo to disconnect you. Setting your prefs to ignore this and ignore that doesn’t stop yahoo from still trying to send the data to you–they’re trying and if you cant acknowledge it all fast enough they eventually disconnect you. And as stated–it might as well be covered as abuse of one’s isp, b/c that uses up the “victim’s” bandwidth as well ad just waste yahoo’s.
Yeah they could start charging a small fee–but not without moderation and/or fixing these problems. Who would want to pay the way it is now? There are other paid services that don’t suffer all these problems (not that they’re all without their own problems, but nothing like the wild west still is)

Comment by Make yahoo bot moderators!! — June 20, 2007 #
JohnnyO, who the F are you or anyone else that is a user to decide who connects and who can get disconnected? Last time I checked, it said YAHOO! at the top of the page, not JohnnyO’s website/messenger/chat/launchcast/flickr/etc. Simple enough to look at it as it is right now. If you are booting, you are denying someone else of a service that is available to anyone. If you have trouble dealing with that FACT, then maybe YOU (and others) should find a different service to use, not the other way around.

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — June 20, 2007 #
Oh and CAPTCHA is failing on the games server, still lots of spam

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — June 21, 2007 #
HOW ABOUT RESTORING THE “CHAT” OPTION IN THE EUROPEAN VERSIONS OF MESSENGER?? THANKS.

Comment by Jiegen — June 21, 2007 #
How about putting up a Euro chat server and having connections based on IP/ISP and kill the proxy connections? Maybe that will make the UN-EXTRADITABLES stop committing crimes on your servers and bragging about how they will never go to jail for their crimes?

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — June 21, 2007 #
Well, it’s been almost a month since this blog was created and now Yahoo Chat has these so called “room lockers”. People make their bots, load some of the bots into a chat room, boot regular chatters out, and bring in the rest of his/her bots in so it effectively “locks” the chat room so no one can get in. Yahoo really needs to stop trying to win the email/search engine war with Google and MS. stop buying sites like Flickr, and get on these problems in the cat room. At any given time, there are at least over 50,000 chat rooms that are pretty much full with regular chatters. In most of these rooms, you can find spam bots, user created bots, and chatters. Yahoo needs to do something because before to long, people are going to go elsewhere for online chatting. What Yahoo needs to do is look at how the so called programers create these booters and room lockers and figure out how they can rewrite and rebuild the chat servers to resist these type of programs once and for all!

Comment by Anon y Mouse — June 22, 2007 #
mouse you are so right,if yahoo is not going to fix the chat rooms,they should closed them down,i been in paltalk for a while now,and i love it, you can even make your own free chat room,no bots,no booters,no room lockers,and its very secure.

Comment by markj — June 22, 2007 #
Surely Yahoo could do a search through its database and locate all the bot ids that were created with the same e-mail address used to activate those bots. Simple application of intelligent thought will show that most boot bot creators make bots with names that are in some form of sequence, or a batch of random numerals and letters that would indicate its not a genuine chat id. Gee, I once wrote such a program.. and I am talking about a decade ago… and I had no fancy programming tools…

Once the originator of the “bot id’s” is identified, Yahoo should then contact that person asking which 5 ids does that user want to keep… and then after 14 days deactivate the rest….or the lot if no reply. What about it , Yahoo? .Or how about asking users to verify their id once on a yearly basis via an-email with a captcha? No response after 14 days.. give it the chop.
Sounds harsh, but it would sure purge out a lot of the rubbish, and the kiddies with booters using hundreds of bot bot ids would have to manually re-register them perhaps some would have to learn to read first to recognize the letters…..
It would not stop them all,- they will always find a way, but at least make it harder for them so most will get bored and go back to their gameboys and leave the genuine chatters alone.

Comment by nscalemodeller — June 22, 2007 #
nscalemodeller, that will never work. Better ideas (that will work!) are adding a serial number to messenger and only letting it have access to a few accounts (three to five) adding OpenID and limiting the number of accounts again. Thats two options out of many that are more effective than the methods you suggest.

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — June 23, 2007 #
Reg trademark….. of course there will be better ideas…some will work, some won’t… but at least I made a suggestion, for what it was worth.

My suggestions? well they are better than being silent …. Limiting the number of accounts I agree with..I believe I mentioned a five accounts limit. But lets face it, anything is worth trying rather than nothing, which seems to be the case at present….
The groups I am associated with are so sick of the booting and room locking by a booter crew which follows them around yahoo (making ignore pointless) they are seriously thinking of moving to other chat alternatives….

Unless yahoo does something …anything… its going to lose a lot more users.

Comment by nscalemodeller — June 23, 2007 #
PS ….Is anyone from Yahoo paying attention to these posts? There have been some good points raised here by some…..

A little feed back fro Yahoo would be encouraging, more so than the automated reply forms for reporting chat abuse……

Comment by nscalemodeller — June 23, 2007 #
Rumor has it this is supposed to be rolled out Second quarter of the calendar year, which means within the next 8 days – counting today. If Y!Games are any indication of the coming changes, keep looking for that alternative and I hope you find a good one.

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — June 23, 2007 #
rotf, thats like asking do they read the abuse reports which we have reason to believe does NOT occur

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — June 23, 2007 #
I still think my idea of credit card verification is a good one NO it does not have to charge you loads of sites use this all the time this in turn would STOP multiple ids being made yahoos word verification on accounts being made is a joke! .This can be bypassed by parsing the HTML and replacing it with your own image it lets you make the id.. im surprised no one has made a new multi id maker that does this its simple also the credit card verification would eliminate kids from chat wasn’t that the reason the user rooms were removed because of the non apropriate content? kids shouldn’t be allows on yahoo period but hey kids will be kids when there parents backs are turned… they can come on and get bombarded with spam and then inturn click the links and get all kinds of malicious spyware,war dialers,adware on there parents pcs i think if you limit the accounts to 10 per card number it would REALLY improve chat and stop people making thousands of ids just because they can… also this would severely limit the ammount of so called room locks that anybody with a pc can do a chimp could lock down one of your chat rooms what is it 60 chatters then bam room unusable hell 40 of those would be spam bots anyway so its not hard to do. Anyways me personally im sick of yahoo and its flaws a lot will agree with me credit card verification or any kind of decent verification should be used the ideal way would be the way paypal does you get a number on your bank statement and then you input that number to allow you to make ids hell even if they charged you for making ids like $2 an id you lot would pay a small fee the money could go back into chat and make it a fun experience again! Yahoo inturn would make MILLIONS and would not need to advertise so much with there bloated messenger. O and for what its worth people try yahaven its a wicked client it makes chat a bit more bearable..

Comment by Karl — June 24, 2007 #
Okay Yahoo!… You guys promised that the chat rooms would be fixed this month. Well, it’s almost the end of June, and I’ve yet to see any improvements in the chat rooms. Maybe if you guys got your rediculously small team of programmers for the chat rooms/Y!IM to work on the problems rather than the useless features you’re always adding on, then maybe Yahoo! would get somewhere with these issues!

P.S.: And while you’re at it, makes some more progress on the Mac and Vista versions. They’ve been waiting on that for as long as we have on Y!IM and the chat rooms!

Comment by Janus — June 26, 2007 #
hmmmmmm so did the yahoo servers crash this night?

Comment by justin m — June 26, 2007 #
Definately something wrong with the servers as I only can log on like 1 of 50 times, and when I do get logged on – I can’t see anyone else typing in chat.

Comment by Parry Hotter — June 26, 2007 #
Well the chat servers went down and came back up. The lamers with the “room lockers” were able to relog in their bots and relock the rooms. Can’t see anyone type but can voice chat as of 12:30am CST.

Comment by Anon Y Mouse — June 26, 2007 #
It’s almost the end of the month, 3 more days to go and all I can see is nothing happening. Lately, I’ve been trying logging into the chatroom, it takes me over 10 simultaneous clicks before able to get through the chat server. Once i’m into the chatroom, all I can see are whole bunch of bots spamming the chatrooms with xxx websites and nonsense “text messages”! Oh good grief…!!

Are we expecting anything soon or is yahoo gonna delay it till “end of July”, maybe?!? Lol

Comment by Vinh Khang — June 26, 2007 #
Chat servers down @ 2am CST

Comment by Anon Y Mouse — June 26, 2007 #
responding to karl… about credit card validation, not everyone on yahoo has access to a credit card and that would basically be prejudiced against those that dont versus those that do… what yahoo needs to do is simply implement that b4 you can log into a chat room you must type in the verifacation image to join a room. i dont know about anyone else but i think i would hate typing that crap in 40 or 50 times to lock a room lol. know what i mean? and as for the spam bots. and the booters. there are several third party clients that greatly reduce the ” bots ” and also if ya got a couple bucks to spend on chat( assuming you are willing to pay for a name… then you will pay to have a peaceful chat as well) purchase ytkpro ( i have it and i love it, never been booted, great anti voice lag features as well as spam bot and booter defense options), theres also ytunnel(i have this as well. but i prefer the ytk) or any other client for chat. dont get me wrong, i hate the bots as well as you or anyone else does. but if yahoo isnt paying attention to what ur saying then sometimes you gotta do something yourself eh… if everyone relied on yahoo to protect them… well you get the idea.. for every fix they do there is an exploit opened up to go around it. and.. thats my two cents. spend it wisely lol

Comment by godlike_disobedience — June 27, 2007 #
ps: no i am not a part of the ytk or ytunnel team, i just like their products.
i prefer regular yahoo messy, but hell sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do eh

Comment by godlike_disobedience — June 27, 2007 #
Ok here it is on Tuesday morning 10:14 am and good old Yahoo Messenger is down and out. Nobody can log on/ What a sorry state of affairs.
I would also like to know about all of those porn bots advertising in the rooms. Wasn’t there a statement from someone who works for you that said by the end of June there wouldn’t be anymore of them? Well it seems that now there are more than ever in the rooms. Sheesh, what a mess this thing is.
I have a suggestion for you. Why not hire someone that is both a computer tech and a chat room user. I think they would know how to not only make Yahoo Messenger work, but also make some money for you people so this thing won’t be crashing and littered with bots all of the time.

Comment by Carl — June 27, 2007 #
I candidate myself for chat patrol lol

Comment by Jiegen — June 27, 2007 #
ive been on yahoo messy all morning… not a problem yet guys.
one thing i dont quite get yet is why you all make such vivid suggestions, posts, complaints, etc… and im not saying they dont have good points. im just wondering why?
you allknow yahoo is not going to fix it right. simple as that ladies n gents. they dont care.
its a free service and the way they see it is if you dont like it.. leave. i can see both sides of this debate.

Comment by godlike_disobedience — June 27, 2007 #
“its a free service and the way they see it is if you dont like it.. leave”

Why bother to put this much time, money and and effort into a service. free or not, and have such a poor product as a result. It makes Yahoo look like the gang that couldn’t code straight.

Everything Yahoo does is an advertisement for Yahoo. It’s amazing anyone spends advertising dollars with this company if this an example of one of their better known products.

Comment by paddler — June 28, 2007 #
Here we are, into July now and STILL nothing. Here’s some advice Mr. Jeff Bonforte, don’t let your staff make promises that they can’t keep. We were promised results by June, and we have seen NO IMPROVEMENT! Lying to customers/users is not a very good business practice, nor does it show strong business ethic.

Comment by Janus — July 1, 2007 #
July 1st and haven’t been able to sign into chat for two days. One can only hope the bots can’t sign either but I suspect they have better technology that Yahoo. See you in Aug…

Comment by paddler — July 1, 2007 #
[...] July, so where’s the new Yahoo? Their blog said they’d have it up and running in June. Anyone know what’s going [...]

Pingback by It's July, so where's the new Yahoo? - BigBlueBall Forums — July 2, 2007 #
RegisteredTrademark …..Who am I? I am one of the guys that boots the underage people…I am the one that locks the mic down so that regs can talk on the mic instead of stupid morons…. I am the one who steals the morons bots that lock up rooms…I am the one who boots morons that think they can come in a room and act like complete idiots…And why did I learn all this stuff….Why did I learn to write booters, and crackers and all the bad stuff??? Well, to defend against these things, you must understand how they work…And thats exactly what I have done…I dont just randomly pick people to boot…I dont run crackers and steal peoples id’s. I help other people get their names back when yahoo wont do anything…I help people defend themselves against booters. Because yahoo sure wont help… And RegisteredTrademark if you cant distinguish between the people that use their “yahoo power” for good or bad, then thats your own downfall. I do (or used to do, not anymore) what needed to be done to keep my reg room a cool place to hang out…If you dont agree, oh well….your opinion really doesnt matter to me….

Comment by JohnnyO — July 2, 2007 #
And people Yahoo isnt lying…They have deadlines for programs…As a software developer, sometimes you miss deadlines due to unforseen problems. Who knows why the changes havent taken effect yet…Youve dealt with the bot problems this long…youll deal with them longer…youre not going anywhere…and your blogs arent going to make the new products come out any faster. And do you think it would bother Yahoo if a couple hundred or even a couple thousand……of you left their chat service….NO…..its not even a paid service…And I’d imagine that the new changes are going to come with the release of the new Vista Messenger, which is a good move for Yahoo. Just chill out and keep logging in to chat every nite and wasting countless hours in front of your computer screen, cussing at it cuz of the bots, and cussing because all the stupid people…You know people, if you start a yahoo group, you can have a private chat room of your very own, where no bots can come to…Do you take the time to explore these other services…no….also, you have private conferences, you can invite your friends and chat bot-free, but do you take advantage of that…No…the point is, that all of you love the drama in the chat rooms….Or else you wouldnt herd in like a bunch of cattle every night or every morning….

Comment by JohnnyO — July 2, 2007 #
JohnnyO, it’s people like you who make Yahoo chat a completely undesirable experience. If there’s one thing I HATE, it’s the so called “regs” who think they run the room and anyone not in their stupid little “chat clique” circle of friends is considered an outsider. Excuse me, but you and the other “regs” don’t OWN the damn rooms. People come on the mic and talk stupid? Well ignore them then. What in the hell gives you more of a right to talk on the mic over anyone else? I’m tired of the damn “regs” and their elitist groupie crap. Hopefully I’ll see you in a room sometime along the way, lol. Everyone is well aware that every room has it’s “regs”, and regardless if an “outsider” is right or wrong – it ultimately comes down to if one “reg” disagrees, all the others follow…in some pathetic effort to maintain their “online” popularity.

Comment by Parry Hotter — July 2, 2007 #
I dont think you bothered to read my post. Let me repeat it for Mr. Illiterate -

Last time I checked, it didn’t say JohnnyOs crappy chat service.

Next he’ll be telling us he’s doing all he can and if he had more power, he could really fix things

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — July 4, 2007 #
LMAO, this idiot doesn’t know that group chat is loooooooooooooong goooooooooooone!

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — July 4, 2007 #
Yahoo chatrooms are impossible to get into. I wonder if the advertisers know whats going on here? If I was paying money to advertise on yahoo chats, I would want a refund because I am sure the number of people seeing my ads. are not what yahoo claimed they would be. ADVERTISERS WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!

Comment by steeev — July 5, 2007 #
i believe that yahoo may actually be fixing something.
probably nothing to do with chat, but nonethe less they are messing with something… like changing a light bulb in the basement where they store the giant wheel n hamster thay use to power the chatrooms.

Comment by bumblebee — July 5, 2007 #
i dont know about every one else but i can not get a room to open and if i am lucky enough to get one it takes for ever i keep hearing they are fixing these problems but i havent seen any fix it got better for a little bit and back as bad or worse then ever

Comment by karen — July 5, 2007 #
Same here. It takes me @#$%ing forever to get into the chatrooms now. Yahoo!… your performance in this matter has been most appauling. Hope the advertisers who give you money see this… Maybe the threat of loosing income will get you all to straighten up and fly right!

Comment by Janus — July 5, 2007 #
how I wish yahoo would git on track..but if they don’t even notify us…
who BELIEVE in yahoo…
well
guess the dog is dead

Fritz

Comment by Leaperman — July 5, 2007 #
get rid of the chat rooms altogether. Nothing but a bunch of losers(pedophiles and sex maniacs)in there anyways.

Comment by younglady — July 5, 2007 #
Well yahoo was working find the other day but why is it not now … Are you all updating and if you are why cant someone put a notice up about it so some of us will know when and for how long???
I have been coming to this site for several weeks now and its the same things posted here. How often do you update this ?

Comment by Julianna — July 6, 2007 #
July 6, 2007: Yahoo Messenger (8.1.0.402) seems to function just fine…HOWEVER…connecting to a Chat room, chosen at random but with low attendance…next to impossible!! Where are the promised improvements?

Comment by Elanor — July 6, 2007 #
pffffffffftttttttttttttt…are the rooms down again…younglady, if the only people you talk to are losers, pedophiles and sex maniacs, I’d change either the rooms you visit or even better, why not not even log in huh?

Comment by Pj — July 6, 2007 #
post edit note: that should read..why bother to log in?

Comment by Pj — July 6, 2007 #
Well Yahell has done it again…..they sure do not seem to care about us little ppl that have tried to make Chat pleasurable for all. So, what gives? It has been 24 hours and NADA……no rooms anymore?? not likely. I even had probs getting their home page and others to load right. And then they advertise for workers……now that is too funny….who, in their right mind, would want to work for a company with such bad standards? I just do not understand all of this. I feel so sorry for some of the ppl that rely on Chat for ppl intervention. For some ppl, that may be all they have. Oh well, to bad, so sad, Yahell even took that away!!!!! Just get something done right for a change.

Comment by skeeter — July 6, 2007 #
I just want to thank Yahoo.. I’ve been online for eons and you don’t see me complaining – If you’re sick of the people using the rooms Yahoo makes an “out” for everything – simply click on the “x”, change the to a different room, mute or ignore – no drama just sit back n chill. So yeah, Yahoo hiccups now and then – give it a rest and live outside the box for a day or two – let the pros do what they do best. And yeah I guess we do need ppl to complain and ppl that don’t it’s like that SP episode where Cartman travels back to the signing of the Declaration…Yahoo can’t look bad – it’s free!

Comment by jess — July 6, 2007 #
there’s just one little problem with your solution pj…EVERY single yahoo chat room is that way now, either bots, language, sexual content, or keep getting booted out. Tried them all. Skeeter, I think all the ‘little ppl’ who gave a damn about good content has gone away because they’re too disgusted with the losers and morons taking over. Blogs are the up and coming thing, we should all focus on those. No bots. Language maybe but we can just ‘flag’ those blogs and poof! they’re history. No booting from a blog. Chat rooms are obsolete. Let them die a timely death, RIP Yahoo Chat.

Comment by younglady — July 6, 2007 #
Yahoo should just pull the plug on chat. The real programmers have obviously quit (probably to get the stain of working on yahoo chat off their resumes) and they have outsourced the coding to overseas (or to a jr. high school computer class).

How else would you explain chat being so horribly screwed up for so long. They broke it and have no idea how to fix it. Why they leave it up in this state is crazy.

I haven’t been able to log on to chat for weeks now. I sent a message to the help email address about not being able to log on and they send a form email back about ignoring bots and reporting abuse.

If only I could log on to be abused! I’m beginning to miss the bots.

Comment by paddler — July 6, 2007 #
I still cannot get into yahoo chat. It has been about 2 years since I could get in. Same ole “could not get in … Chat took longer than expected” bs

Comment by Rick — July 6, 2007 #
If you do anything fix the boot problem. Not even Ytunnel helps if someone can transmit continuous disconnect from chat messages to the servers with YOUR ID. Make every feature SOMETHING YOU CAN REJECT PERMISSION REQUESTS/ACCESS TO! Doesn’t take a genius to recognize it should be coded that way!

Present philosophy seems to be develop more crap for the program that only opens new ways to knock someone off chat. KISS DESIGN – Keep It Simple Stupid.

Comment by Anonymous — July 6, 2007 #
Lighten up about chat rooms, jeesh, it was and still is only a tool for communication… Dog in Manger attitudes suck…meaning, IIIIIII don’t like it, therefore youuuuuuu can’t have it…pfffftttt… simple solution…like I said…don’t log into them, nobody forces anyone to come online and if you find yourself in a situation you can’t handle…well jeesh, the door isn’t locked..you can leave at anytime…..It’s a free service and yes every time Yahoo upgrades it gets worse..that’s a given now..but..the very people that moan about chat rooms and how bad they are, are usually the first to moan when they aren’t there. Keep it in perspective and I’ll let you into a secret…its NOT compulsory to attend.

Comment by Pj — July 7, 2007 #
i see. i mentioin paltalk and my post gets deleted. you people are reading this crap and your so worried about the name paltalk on yahoos blog youll delete my comment, by the way is against the 1st ammendment. you cant sensor me for mentioning the competion.

what gets me is that you are reading everyones posts but are too scared to reply with an answer. yet you can delete my posts. BULLSHIT!

Comment by jak.lauren — July 7, 2007 #
Your paltalk mention is still there, in fact I’ve now also joined. Thanks for the tip. July 7th and still cannot get into Yahoo chat rooms.

Comment by Mark — July 7, 2007 #
It’s been well over a month and chat is still screwed up. Yahoo was the place to go to chat that covered just about every topic and have hundreds of people in the rooms to caht with. I’m sorry to say that I too am sick of this wait for them to figure out what the hell they’re doing. It’s time to move on and find another service that works and meets all of my needs. Ciao yahoo!

Comment by Potentialysane — July 7, 2007 #
i see nothing about the 18-seconds-rule in the blog. that rule has been introduced a few years ago and basically prevents a chatter from long conversations on the mic. this rule is absolutely ridiculous. the majority of chatters prefer a longer timelimit, let’s say 30 seconds. regards,

Comment by miranda — July 7, 2007 #
YAHOO has never explained the very rude and obnoxious 18 SECOND MIC TIME LIMIT.

This inability to “hold the numbers” is the most disturbing problem. People raid rooms and disturb game hosts or interrupt chatters who trying to make a point. Disrupters are hard to ignore off because things move so fast.

The cue order becomes irrelevant, and the most obnoxious and disruptive people get on the mic over and over.

In this very limited time environment, people are reduced ot calling names and attacking other chatters. There is not enough time to breathe and reason.

Nothing has ruined chat more.

PLEASE ADDRESS THIS!

Why was this limit imposed? When is it going to be removed??

Comment by kevin the genius — July 7, 2007 #
hi just wondering why the chat room keeps freezing and everyone is getting kicked out of chat this has bin going on for a few dayz now and it is a pain in the jacksy………… plz sort it asap much appretiated

Comment by looby_lou — July 7, 2007 #
Younglady, I could not agree with u more about the losers, morons and the ppl that just want to have fun in a clean, friendly manner. I have stuck it out for 10 years and it is getting harder every day to accept the mess Yahoo is in. Ever since the “BIG” lawsuit, Yahoo has just not been able to recover. But the biggest shock was how they blogged that they have less than 6 ppl working on the Chat part….never in my wildest dreams. Now the picture is getting clearer……hahaha But I think that Jr.High kids could do a better job. Give them a job!!!!!

Comment by skeeter — July 7, 2007 #
I don’t know if anyone’s still reading this, but the situation is not any better. I work in a data center and can not comprehend this level of service to your customers. Need someone to write some queries? I’ll do it, because, this is out of hand. I won’t even say, “Do what you can” because obviously you are not. This is unaceptable service. Please fix it, if you give a shit.

Comment by Mykl — July 7, 2007 #
#

Your paltalk mention is still there, in fact I’ve now also joined. Thanks for the tip. July 7th and still cannot get into Yahoo chat rooms.

Comment by Mark — July 7, 2007 #

yeah, i made a post a day or two ago and they deleted it. im surprised to see it there still. and…
johnny0. i agree wih you man. if half these people who hate the way chat is going would just x out the rest of us may actually have a good time.
it gets old listening to the mouthbreathers say the same crap day in and day out.
i used to run all the programs too. got old. and fast.
now, i got a great proggie called ytkpro and i love it. i dont get booted. it has a built in anti voice lag thingy and with a little minor tweaking i dont even see the bots. porn or otherwise. and like most of you are experiencing a difficulty getting in to chat. well. ytk and ymlite as well as yazak all have a bump or brute force feature that will pop you right in a room as long as its not full.
right now one of the ‘genius’s’ from yahoo is toying iwth updating the servers… hopefully… and at times nobody can get in.
either bear with it, or burn out. nobody cares! its yahoo. not reality.
go outside for once. work on getting some color back in ur albino lookin asses. no telling how many of you look like death warmed over from sitting inside all daylong trying to log into chat and throwing your mouses and keyboards screaming lmao.

Comment by jak.lauren — July 7, 2007 #
A few thoughts for your consideration.

Yahoo! is to be commended for even having free chat rooms. It is an enormous undertaking, especially considering the fact that there are some very clever people out there who try to exploit the system by writing bots, password hackers, and booters.

It is pointless to get angry at Yahoo! for not fixing things yesterday. They may need to learn that setting expectations correctly is key to customer satisfaction, but THEIR failures to achieve YOUR goals is no reason to badger them.

The rather simple solution for the migration of sexuality into the non-adult chat rooms is to bring back the adult user rooms, and to limit access to those over 18. If those who are interested in sex play have a safe place to go, they will most certainly go there, leaving the other rooms to the other users.

As the number of broadband users increased, it is to be expected that the current system architecture and hardware would eventually fail. As frustrating as it is, we need to applaud Yahoo for taking steps to fix the problem rather than chucking it away entirely, which they could have easily decided to do.

Do I wish it would have been fixed yesterday? Of course. But I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth and complain that the new teeth have not yet arrived.

Just my 7 cents.

Comment by Jelq — July 7, 2007 #
JohnnyO uses Y!Tunnel! LMAO!! What a joke of a program.

Comment by Parry Hotter — July 7, 2007 #
A few weeks and “within the next month” have stretched into months. I think it is very telling that there are no longer any ads on chat windows. Obviously they’re letting chat die on the vine and hoping it will just go away.

Comment by PTCruiser — July 8, 2007 #
i agree johnny. and yeah ytk is better than ytunnel. its the same idea- a messy add on basically but its sooo much more advanced than tunnel will ever be. and no im not mad at yahoo. i dont get mad at people on the net. its pointless.

i like my yahoo(when its working lol) but i dont limit myself to getting upset when chat goes down. but it does piss me off when they delete my posts for stupid reasons. even on the net im gauranteed 1st ammendment rights to type or say any damned thing i want to(with the exception of pedo,terrorist, etc…) to anyone i want to.
basically… when you cant get in chat- go take a walk, ride a bike. have sex with someone not on a cam… who knows you may like it

Comment by jak.lauren — July 8, 2007 #
Funny how all these improvements will make yahoo much better, it is now july 8th and guess what!, most of the chat rooms are locked down where you cant get into any of them.It was also announced earlier this year that yahoo will be releasing a new version of msg. the first half for vista users who
like me cant use yahoo msg, due to codec issues
its now the secound half and no new release and now cant even get into a chat room with my old clunker lap top with XP.I know you folks are trying but i personaly know of many member who have left for msn and dont mind paying for it to avoid the aggrivation……..just my rant…sorry

Comment by johnny_oh812 — July 8, 2007 #
yay for chat working again. too bad its all locked rooms and retards with mass iggy. lol at least the iggy button works still lmfao. and yeah johnny, i got a pc with that vista crap on it. i hate it. altho if you go to freecreed.com theres a possible fix for your yahoo voice problems. doesnt work for everyone but it may be worth a shot man.
personally… i like xp just fine. vista can blow me lmao.

Comment by jak.lauren — July 8, 2007 #
jak,
Thanks for the tip with freecreed but i have vista ultimate wich is a 64 bit version and no codec availible…but thanks again

Comment by johnny_oh812 — July 8, 2007 #
Akamai disruption affected Google, Yahoo and Microsoft

A DNS service outage at Akamai Technologies prevented access to some of the Internet’s major Web sites Tuesday, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, according to The SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Center. An investigation into the problem revealed that Akamai’s DNS servers were not responding to requests. The problem appeared to affect the company’s worldwide network of DNS servers, suggesting that the problem may have been with caused by a problem within Akamai rather than an external attack on its DNS servers The hiccup in Akamai’s service is the second in less than a month. In May, a software glitch slowed Akamai servers used to host customer Web pages and other information, making it difficult to reach some of its customers’ Web sites for around 90 minutes, Akamai acknowledged. Akamai blamed that service interruption on a bug in content management software that Akamai customers use to update content on Akamai servers

NUFF SAID

Comment by spamz — July 9, 2007 #
THE BOTTING PROBLEM IS ALSO DUE TO PEOPLE LIKE LILBUTCH,DB,SNAFU,BLUEJENE,TRUTH AND OTHERS WHO CODDLE ANTI AMERICAN TERRORISTS WHILE STEPPING ON DECENT CHATTERS LIKE ME…SO PEOPLE BOT SO THEY CAN HAVE THEIR RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH FULFILLED IN POLITICS ROOM 6

Comment by spamz — July 9, 2007 #
After 11 years, I no longer have ANY faith in YAHOO, so little faith in fact I closed my YAHOO web site and hired a new service. PROMISES, PROMISES we’ve all heard them come from Yahoo before… I’ll believe it when I see it. I will NOT be returning to yahoo UNTILL I hear all of these “changes” are made and are effective. For those who may feel the same as I do, I’ve been using PALTALK a GREAT, FREE chat service that doesnt tolerate bots, hackers, boots, or lags in ANY FASHION, and funny enough, paltalk doesnt seem to have the troubles controling that type of behavior like Yahoo does. Paltalk now has numerous “yahoo refugee” rooms for people SICK TO DEATH of Yahoo’s incompetence in controling hackers, bots, laggers and booters. HHMMM wonder why YAHOO struggles to resolve these issues when another, smaller service thats also FREE has no trouble?…Do I feel smoke blowing up my yahoo butt again?…we’ll see soon folks!

Comment by aiaArideth — July 11, 2007 #
when will you address the issue of booters in chat rooms. It is getting to the point where the fun has been taken out. I met some great people through out the world, to bad you as a organization youyare not handiling this issue with more concern.i have mentioned this for about a year now

Comment by jpanther55 — July 11, 2007 #
i love paltalk what i like about it you can make your own free room you are the admin of your room or you can have your friends admin the room all so,no bots, no porn bots, no laggers, and Crystal Clear Voice Chat Rooms ,TV-Quality Video Chat,

Comment by mike r — July 11, 2007 #
For Jeff Bonforte:

Jeff .. you made some very attractive promises in your blog of May 25th. It seems to me an update is in order .. why would leave good customers hanging like this. You are a VP and have a responsibility to us all. I am not one of the complainers but would very much like to know the truth about your situation. If you don’t really plan to fix things .. of if you are unable, just let us all know so we can quit hoping and move on to the next provider.,

Comment by mrmaleman2 — July 11, 2007 #
We have been experiencing issues with the servers for several weeks now, more so than ever, and no notice is given to us about these ” brownouts” or whatever you may call them..

Our names stay stuck in the room, long after we close our Messenger and even turn off the computer. Rooms think they are full. Waiting to login to chat.. rooms that are ” empty” even won’t gain us entry. Why not shut it Down totally for a few days, and install those new servers? Why not send out some mass information to let us know what is going on?

I love chatting on messenger, but, this is getting old and its getting there fast.

As for bots blocking your server traffic, what is wrong with live user verification, like we do when we forget our password?

Comment by Valerie — July 11, 2007 #
Is anyone else having trouble getting messenger today?

Comment by shirley — July 13, 2007 #
LOL @ Yahoo removing my posts…Figures…

Comment by JohnnyO — July 14, 2007 #
Dont speak of third party chat clients superiority or theyll yank your post….LOL

Comment by JohnnyO — July 14, 2007 #
PLEASE do something about the ghostnames that sometimes stay in the room even though the person left the room. this prevents other people from getting in the room because it is full with ghostnames. regards

Comment by miranda — July 14, 2007 #
All I can say is Yahoo!! Hope this all really happens

Comment by hckymom — July 14, 2007 #
About time for an update?

Comment by Pj — July 16, 2007 #
miranda — yeah, even when I log out of the chat rooms, they will still keep my screen name logged in and I will continue to receive messages from people I’ve never heard of!! It doesn’t matter if I log out of messenger, I still get messages. Yahoo, that’s one BIG complaint!

Comment by Naomi — July 16, 2007 #
Well, it’s now July 17. No change in chat: rooms are still hard to get into, bots are everywhere, ghostnames take up valuable real estate.

That’s six weeks from the original announcement. Does anyone at Yahoo have an update? It would be nice to know…..Thanks.

Comment by Ryan B — July 17, 2007 #
hmmm, no updates or replies!, it appears nobody in yahoo is listening…oh well, it all sounded too good to be true anyways

Comment by johnny_oh812 — July 17, 2007 #
there won’t be any replies or updates. yahoo is shutting down permanently. EOS.

Comment by kang — July 17, 2007 #
Yahoo isnt shutting down moron…And all you people are whiney, little cry babies…Find a new hobby.

Comment by JohnnyO — July 17, 2007 #
3 months after the yahoo chat state of the union… very little progress has been done. but i guess it was the idea that counted right? still have lamers using progs from markus and dazza and thinking they are hackers lmao

Comment by c4v3 — July 19, 2007 #
lol they removed my post about someone elses post being removed and how that just proved the read this and just ignore us. Lets see if this one survives…

Comment by paddler — July 19, 2007 #
LOL @ DAZZA

Comment by JohnnyO — July 19, 2007 #
it’s incredible to think this one of most known chat room in the world has only a few developpers

Comment by Djé of marseille — July 20, 2007 #
So you have done nothing and you have read these comments for 3 months and yet you do not even have the guts to give some kind of responce???So why do you think you should still be working for Yahoo????I think we need to spread the word about Yahoo.

Comment by pats — July 20, 2007 #
I will have to agree with last comment above, u have done nothing..Firstly with respect to ‘booting’,'lagging’,freezing,yahoo servers should be able to jump in ,after first 3 seconds or less..an knock off an ban the person who’s using those programs..arent you yahoo saying in chatrooms,yahoo is recording people ips ?..Think what i just wrote there,,k,,An these ‘xxx ads’ in chatroom,, Whats yr 10000 employees per location doing ?..Get there azzes in chatrooms to identify,how these ‘xxx bots’ look like coz they change every so often, so lazy azz employees only robbing yr company off…Anyways ,,yahoo has its bad and good side, ‘ not all people, all think alike in chatrooms ‘ duhh..!!

Comment by TriP — July 20, 2007 #
Yahoo Chat Rooms Lagging,
Id joining Room Leaving Room
Bumping, Text not work in chatrooms , Voice servers, web cam servers not working properly. WHAT is Going on? Bots of booters still in chat rooms.

Comment by Princess Nadia — July 21, 2007 #
actually until we get a response to our complaints, i.e. booters, room lock bots…lagger programs, other than iggy, which seems to be the age old mechanical answer from you…and yahoo boot program sites which you allow, i don’t think i can trust anything yahoo ’says’ or ‘does’ which is probably why yahoo does ‘nothing’.

Comment by roaddancr` — July 21, 2007 #
First off, I was lucky to even find this blog page…just happened to find it browsing through Yahoo Answers as to why the chat rooms were down today 7/22/07. My main gripe is that yahoo doesn’t give it’s users any “heads up” as to when and how long they perform maintenance. Also I have a question. It seems that when I used Messenger 8.1 the Adult rooms were eliminated. Is it yahoo’s intention to delete adult chat rooms? In order for me to get the adult rooms back I had to go back to an older version of messenger, which I feel, as an adult, I shouldn’t have to do in order to use adult rooms. I would appreciate a truthful answer as to whether or not yahoo is eliminating adult rooms.

Comment by Vixen — July 21, 2007 #
Oops…my bad…today is the 21st…lol

Comment by Vixen — July 21, 2007 #
See they are reading these letters,because they get rid of the ones they don’t like.All we want is a progress report,is that so hard to do.If you can’t do that than you are just a punk.

Comment by pats — July 23, 2007 #
i love having the first ammendment ripped and torn in my face.
this will be my last post here. they read and delete but dont respond so forget em. im moving in to paltalk. bought my 1 yr membership last nite.. there are no bots and no booters nor are there any spam bots, porn bots, nothing. no lag either. and rooms can hold up to 200 people in most rooms
theyve got free memberships free chat.

Comment by jak.lauren — July 23, 2007 #
People still whining….Geez….The changes, if there are any will prolly occur when they release the vista messenger or around that time…And like they said, the new servers are being tested. The games servers already have the captcha security now. It just takes time to make changes people. If they make you type a security code before entering a chatroom, that will greatly reduce bots…Im sure there are ways around it as several people have already cracked the captcha security, but this will cut down on the majority of the script kiddies and morons that just download these programs. However, as long as there is chat, there will be programmers that “hack” it. And dont think for a second, that yahoo isnt looking at this blog and taking down undesirable posts, and seeing what people are typing. I think they may know the problems that chat has, they just prolly cant come up with a solution to fix everything. I mean after all, they only have a handful of dedicated chat programmers…LOL…Just sit back and chill people…Youve waited this long…What’s a couple more months? You act like its the end of the world or something.

Comment by JohnnyO — July 24, 2007 #
Wow I actually got in today and was actually able to switch rooms. We will see how long it lasts.

After looking around at a few dozen rooms it came to me. I FINALLY KNOW why Yahoo can’t get rid of all the bots. Its so simple, I’m surprised it didn’t dawn on me until now.

OK this isn’t meant to be snotty or anything, I am serious. If they got rid of all the bots the rooms would be totally empty. In the few dozen rooms I looked at there were probably 10-15 real people. You could fit all the real people left in all of Yahoo chat into a handful of rooms.

It will be tough telling their advertisers that their numbers were a tad off. Instead of 150,000 chatters at any one time it looks like we probably only have a couple thousand..

Get use to it, this is as good as they can allow it to get.

(Had to close down 5 popup porn bot windows just while typing this)

Comment by paddler — July 24, 2007 #
Daily yahoo testing their servers? Today is 26 july 07 4:36 pst yahoo chat rooms are down again.
I heard from Adara a cute bot maker Yahoo is going to add alpha server resulting everyone need to verify he is human or bot by entering captcha. When you enter the room , room will give you a captcha link to click on after the click a page will popup asking to enter captcha then it will let user enter the room.
I have said for a long time that a captcha on room join would be a bot killer. But I still contend that Yahoo makes money from bots due to as views. But this would be the way to do it. JohnnyO where did you hear this? Yahoo suck big time YahDuhh

Comment by Princess Nadia — July 26, 2007 #
pop up’s Whats that? lol

Comment by roxy — July 27, 2007 #
yahoo just has automated responses to questions, the reponses are always wrong, they perform server maint. on weekends it seems mainly so this should be the busiest chat time. just goes to show when you gain money and power in a business most think less of the consumer, build cheaper products that fail, the only worry they have is how much money we made today and not how many satisfied users did we gain. yahoo will never get rid of bots its the only way they can act like they have people actually in their program in great numbers which creates alot of traffic which creates revenue just like booting they let these morons create a million i.d.s to boot with and fill rooms more traffic even though it is all from the same i.p. that could get perm. banned and never does. just all about money and greedy ceo’s as every business in america is becoming. pretty sad what use to be a great country is turning into nothing more than an over ran joke of political assholes thinking their wealth makes them powerful when most are miserable addicts of some sort taking advantage of the only true americans left US the working class.

Comment by mryahoo — July 28, 2007 #
ill always use yahoo.its a get messenger program and i cant wait till the new yahoo comes out…bots,booters,mass iggies never bothered me..i never used voice chat and i cant be booted…so with that in mind…your doing great job yahoo keep it up

Comment by a different chris — July 28, 2007 #
i like the fact that i can talk to any one i want in any state i want thats kool

Comment by molly — July 30, 2007 #
Nadia, I agree. If you look at alot of the bots in and crazy names under the old member search, the majority of them had a location of….you guessed it SUNNYVALE! LOL. And I didnt hear it from anywhere. I am assuming that since they did it on the games servers, and theyve done it on the forgot password screens, and theyve done it on the registration screens, it is only a matter of time…It is the most logical thing that Y! could do to stop the bot problem..
But that is still not going to help with multi-bot booters, unless they force you to CAPTCHA upon login to whichever protocol being used for the login. A word to the unwise…Get a 3rd party client to chat with(and another screen name) and keep your messenger name unknown to the general public.
I hear ya different chris…Last time I was booted was like 4 years ago. I really miss my java though. I guess Y! didnt have enough people to maintain so many different protocols.

Comment by JohnnyO — July 30, 2007 #
Oh and by the way, check this out…This is Jeffs other blog with a follow up to his State of the ChatRoom Address…
http://blog.messenger.yahoo.com/blog/2007/07/20/chat-rooms-update

Comment by JohnnyO — July 30, 2007 #
ok for the last couple of days yahoo has been stop starting at exactly the same time of day, each day. Is this when you all go on your friggin tea breaks or wot !!!…either kill it off completely and sort it and bring it back when its working properly, or if you do not have the expertise to undertake suchhhhh an arduous task…call in outside help to do it e.g. any of the chat client writers can do it…pfffffttt..hell, right now..IIIIIIII could do it.

Comment by Pj — July 31, 2007 #
How does 3rd party clients reduce revenue for yahoo when you can kill the chat ads by modifying the dlls in yahoo anyways. & most people do it either by doing it themselves or using someones simple Vb program & removing ads. I personally don’t think Yahoo! is going to be any better than it is now cause there will ALL WAYS be people out there writing in Vb & c++ that can & will figure out the yahoo login…. I used to code with vb, c++ & Delphi so I know how easy it is to get sources to change these things. They might slow it down for a dew months but they can’t stop it. So yes its all false hopes YET AGAIN

Comment by 0u7l4w — July 31, 2007 #
When is yahoo going to get on board and make MODERATED ROOMS where users can have their own chat rooms with the ability to moderate and kick out annoying pest. This technology has been out here for years and I want to know when yahoo is going to get on board and do something to give us a more user friendly enviorment to enjoy. In My opinion even if yahoo works out their kinks and quirks it’s not going to stop the stalking that goes on in chat and the only way that can be eliminated is by giving us the power to boot, kick and ban the parasites that come into our rooms to reak havock on it’s users. What do you say YAHOO is this in the cards for us and will we ever get user rooms back?

Comment by Tammy — July 31, 2007 #
tammy yahoo is still in the stone age”s thats why i use paltalk, i have my own room i dont have to worried about booters,porn bots,lots of my friends have gone over to paltalk why waste your time with yahoo chat it sucks

Comment by markj — August 1, 2007 #
Tammy noone wants moderated rooms as far as admins go…And if you want your own room that only your friends can join, there is voice conferencing, and also you can create an actual room by signing up to Yahoo Groups, and only people you admit to your group are allowed…What is this a damn daycare? Geez…It doesnt need moderated rooms…It needs server side security that protects connected clients and it needs client side options that a user can set, ie regular expressions, etc…. And markj, why waste your time posting on a yahoo blog if you use something different and dont care about yahoo chat? 0u7l4w, all the chat ads and messenger ads and all that crap can be turned off by simple registry “hacks”.

Comment by JohnnyO — August 1, 2007 #
I remember fire talk
moderators and roving moderators
pal talk is worse little demigods who
exert fassist controll

i like yahoo because it is a place where ideas are not censored, by nessesity that allows the pervs and the foul and profane free reign.

that is the price of freedom, real freedom
it means everyone is really free to be nice or mean

i think ending the booters is good and inhibiting the script kiddies is good

converslyi think a automatic time limit on voice is
a good thing

i think you should be timmed out for as long as you talk up to three min

i think there should be a three min moratorium

that stops political speaches and eco speach
religous brainwashing and that ilk.

the point about yahoo is the chatting
if you want a uninterupted chat take it to pm

thats my two cents
yahoo should hire me

badboybilzer

Comment by badboybilzer — August 1, 2007 #
Moderated rooms would be the final nail in the coffin for yahoo chat
“pal talk is worse little demigods who
exert fassist controll”
GOOD POINT i have used paltalk and people seem to get an ego the size of texas as soon as they can kick people they do like mad for no reason!!! imagine how awful a bot in each room would be the filters would SUCK it is yahoo afterall remeber one wrong word bam kicked out or banned o yes what a great idea NOT.

Comment by timmy — August 1, 2007 #
Well, after reading the many posts in this blog, it is apparent to me that YAHOO does not think about the consumer. Perhaps it is time to monitor chat. There are many yahoo answers clients that would probably be happy to donate time to doing this. You can set a best answers rating that is say 20 percent or higher that would help to control chat. If it is impossible to do that, perhaps a small charge would offset the problem with bots, and boots, and improve the consumers aspect. It is admirable that yahoo wants to provide free chat but free is not always better. AOL charges for chat and it is better because they offer immediate response to problems.Identity, profanity,and other issues. I would probably pay 5 or 10 dollars a month for a room that is better monitored and controled.

Comment by redheadedgreeneyedvixen2000 — August 2, 2007 #
Yah, Yahoo Chat has 2 huge problems. One, petty little people who disagree with your views, even if you haven’t been swearing or using vulgarities, can kick you out of chatrooms, block you from entering chatrooms etc…a few babies who are hackers on the side and can’t put up with people who disagree with them.
Second, way too many porn bots clogging up the rooms. They should not allow more than 10 per room max. And no 2 or more people with the same name or variations of it…the bots load up rooms with 7 guys named freak or something. Please fix it up Yahoo.

Comment by Jon — August 2, 2007 #
LOL redhead I bet you are one of those that believe that the government should censor television and radion too…Pay to be moderated…What a joke. Profanity???Its an adult chat room if you dont want to see profanity it is your choice not to go that room…Moderate your own content…Moderate your childrens content…But dont be stupid and want somone else to moderate everyone. People dont want to be moderated. And Jon, they cant block the number of names in a room due to the fact that people can use proxies and login many bots and they will not show up from the same ip address. They have to stop the automation of it…which would be using the captcha security to enter a room..That would make it a hassle for people to login many bots thereby weeding out script kiddies and morons. But stop whining about profanity and vulgarities….It is adult chat…Find a room where people dont cuss if thats what you want…Otherwise, it is a public chat room…a community if you will. An internet version of REALITY TV. But the choice is yours what room you enter and if you stay and who you ignore. Stop looking to yahoo to make your decisions…Geez people…GROW UP…Maybe people dont like you infringing on their freedoms…

Comment by JohnnyO — August 4, 2007 #
Paltalk costs money (if you want to view videos and see no adverts) and every room is separately moderated. Even so you can still do pretty much anything you want as long as you aren’t advertising or being a complete dickhead.

Exactly what you can do depends on the rooms creator and its moderators but heavily censored rooms would quickly find they have no visitors and disappear.

Every room is different. People create rooms and popular rooms get regular visitors and last sometimes for years. Other rooms last a few hours and fade away.

Paltalk only makes sure there are no illegal things happening (like kiddie porn etc) in any of the rooms. Paltalk users would quickly report anything like that because they care about Paltalk and want to keep it going. Yahoo users probably don’t care about Yahoo any more than Yahoo cares about them. That was obvious when yahoo allowed people to create unmoderated rooms which featured illegal activities and nobody cared enough to report it (or more likely Yahoo just didn’t care enough to do anything about it).

Yahoo is crazy for not doing a model like this. It is self policing. They are trying to create a space based laser weapon to kill a mosquito. Sometimes simple is best.

Comment by paddler — August 6, 2007 #
Testing to Destruction.

Oink!

Comment by Fritz Batten — August 8, 2007 #
Follow the money..
I call it extinction economics.

Comment by leaperman — August 8, 2007 #
lag .. lag .. lag … what is going on ? … is this the passive approach to yahoo shutting down chat ? it will be difficult for me to enjoy yahoo’s other services if I can’t trust their chat client .. can you say market share …

Comment by alexandra the fierce — August 8, 2007 #
be nice to see yahoo straightened but until then ill remain in travelersnetwork , free 3d virtual reailty caht w/o bots, booters, spam, etc. ty

Comment by Crazy — August 8, 2007 #
I dont believe that y ahoo has any intention of cleaning up yahoo chat. It does not work much of the time and the excuses are endless. Yahoo must be making money in some way from the bots. But more importantly in the short term is that they refuse to fix the glitches. Other sites keep their chat rooms working, but Yahoo can’t or won’t. We all need to contact the advertisers on yahoo and let them know that Yahoo is a hollow shell. They are no doubt telling potential adveritsers how many people are in the chat rooms,,,but in reality they are creating false numbers to improve their profit margins. They are a fraud..!!!!!!

Comment by Robert Keesing — August 10, 2007 #
When will these chat changes come into effect? Summer is almost over in the Northern parts of the world. Is this for the US version of Yahoo chat as well? I havent seen any changes, what will be new about Yahoo chat?

New layout and interface and things as well as rid of the annoying people and bots? No one will want to use chat anymore if things don’t change.

Comment by roberta — August 10, 2007 #
I’d like to address the issue of third party chat clients.
While some folks may abuse the system with them, there are plenty of us who don’t. I believe the abusers are in the minority & the “good” users are in the majority. I, myself, use third party chat clients because that is what my “older computer” only allows me to run, decently. If I try & fire up Yahoo’s Messenger, it slows my already slow computer down to a snail’s crawl. Some of us out here in “chat-land” may not be able to financially keep up with the rest of you more well off folks, & I believe that needs to be taken into consideration. Have the makers & producers of Yahoo Chat done a serious evaluation of expenses that one can occur across the U.S. or even across the country? The costs to consumers across the globe make a definite impact as far as whether or not a person can go to their nearest retailer & just drop several hundred dollars into a new computer, to just be able to use all of the new technology that the internet offers. Some of us are forced into using our older computers longer, or trying to give them longer life. Internet companies should be aware of this fact, & should continue to make their products more user-friendly – & that goes to the users of older computers, that may not be able to handle the speed & agility of alot of the nowadays chat rooms, etc.. Please remember, we’re all on the same team, & we all contribute to a companies success in our own separate ways – even those of us who don’t own or use multi-billion dollar computer systems. Thank You. ~ Rotty

Comment by Rotty — August 11, 2007 #
Ok so yahoo is workin on it. I dont believe they are its worse today than its been all week
C’mon someone from yahoo hit the right switch geesh!!!!

Comment by Julianna — August 11, 2007 #
I think after all of the security suggestions made by many of us who have commented here, Yahoo may be considering those things and working to implement them. I know I (and others) have challenged Yahoo to provide fixes that actually work, and it is reasonable to believe that delays are caused by exactly this. How many of you could implement SiteKey on your site, and how long would it take you? What if you added OpenID? Or a RSA security dongle (like paypal now has)? As if that wasn’t enough, how about having to choose between those options and the others that exist and seeing if you can keep all (or at least most) of your customers happy?

Yes, Yahoo makes a sum of money via advertising, but is money the solution to every problem? Surely not – and if you disagree, you do not know much about money.

That does not excuse Yahoo for letting the condition of the chatrooms deteriorate to the degree that has occurred. We all hope – likely even Yahoo employees hope – that the problems can be fixed to truly solve problems and prevent future problems. Can Yahoo know what those who want to exploit their service will do next? Probably about as well as you can pick the winning lottery numbers with accuracy ahead of time. The truth is that just as other programs get updates, I am certain that the ad/porn bots will get an update also. An solution provided by Yahoo will be temporary at best. A new exploit will be found and shared and 1000’s of script kiddies will have access to it. Another method of selling porn, or 4×4’s, or enlargement pills, or whatever WILL BE FOUND AND USED. The reason why is simple.

Yahoo has 350,000,000 unique users per month – and while those are last years figures, you think that number has not increased? That is a huge potential market that can’t be ignored by desperate marketers. If you think Yahoo isn’t looking for a way to deal with that, you are wrong. Yahoo sells advertising – they are not in business to provide free advertising. They didn’t restructure, they haven’t changed their business model. If they had, I would have read it in the Wall Street Journal, and that hasn’t happened. What has happened is that Yahoo received enough complaints to pass the required threshold which requires action. Nothing more. So the changes you WILL see, WILL arrive, and WILL be effective.

It also WILL take time. Let these people do their jobs, stop flaming, and give useful suggestions – real world suggestions – not some fantasy solution that can’t be implemented.

@Jon – YCH:2 is a room with problems? Face reality, all of the rooms have problems, including YCH:1. You should know, you are one of the contributors to the problems there!

Comment by Mike C. — August 12, 2007 #
I totally agree with Roger & Hawequas….If its not broke..dont fix it! Yahoo is trying to improve things but instead making it worse and impossible to chat in the rooms. Please go back to the old version…its sooooooo much better. Who cares if bots are in the room..so of them are cute…check out the Trivia bot in Islam Chat:6,,you actually learn things from it!! Please Yahoo…..do something and fast !!

Comment by Adara Muslimah — August 12, 2007 #
I’m all for yahoo clearing out all the bots! Good things come to those who wait..No bots are cute!! the trivia bots spam up the rooms with the same questions over and over, and take up space that should be used by a human chatter!! Get rid of all bots!! YAHOOOOOOOO!!

Comment by d_a_r_k_eyed_l_i_l_y — August 12, 2007 #
Well, it seems as if Yahell has done it again!!!! Bad enough we have a hard time gettng into or staying in a room but at least you could have voice…..NOT anymore. Now even vc chat will not connect. Is Yahoo really trying to shut us all down? It sure seems so…and yes, we have been very patient with all their major problems, considering. Way back when, we all hated it when Yahoo would require updates that made matters worse, not better. And once again, the client makers would be able to find a solution….thank you, thank you….but not anymore. So, we must all wait….and wait…and wait some more. Maybe if most of the advertisers on Yahoo find out how bad things have gotten, they may rethink renewing any contracts with Yahoo. Because even they are losing out in the long run. But most of us are the die-hard chatters and we want and deserve a lot better than what they are dishing out. This is all so unfair !!!!!

Comment by skeeter — August 12, 2007 #
Listen:: I spent a better part of twenty minutes reading the complaints and praises of Yahoo users. Here’s my two-cents worth, “for what it’s worth”. Great fix the holes, plug at the bots, rewrite the code, lock it up.. But! as for third-party clients well simply put good luck! freeware, shareware, commercial alike, if I see ads i remove them, same as i walk away and mute the T.V. at commercials. As for third party clients, well thats just fair play, like IE vs. FF.(btw. lets see you block over 65000 idiots with thier client, bot or no bot!) anyway, but if Yahoo wants to lock them out, by all means go ahead .. Someone will undue it and make it better, It’s just a fact!! Note: almost every third party client is portable and can be copied from one machine to the next (as a backup) and still run with little to no effert. Personaly the *.dll hell Yahoo causes for most! avoided by third-party clients is in Yahoo’s best interest by simply avoiding man hours in complaints, support questions, email frenzies and telephone blitz.

Comment by wzb — August 13, 2007 #
I would like to put my two cents worth in here. We have a large group of users who play trivia in a yahoo chat room. Lately we can not even use the rooms due to inability to join chat, lag, missing text and trouble with voice. We are right now having to use conferences to play the game. Which cuts out the ads and doesn’t exactly help yahoo in that respect. It has not improved since May in fact it has gotten worse!!

Comment by Sarasparagon — August 13, 2007 #
hey sarasparagon you can make your own trivia room in paltalk,there are some some trivia rooms there paltalk rocks

Comment by markj — August 14, 2007 #
Okay enough with the lip service, just fix yahoo chat.

Comment by mrbill — August 15, 2007 #
http://blog.messenger.yahoo.com/blog/2007/08/12/chat-room-maintenance-aug-13/

There is Sarah Bacons Blog about the chat room maintenance taking place this week. Dont try to post nothin, cuz i think she dont wanna hear all your whining..LOL

Comment by JohnnyO — August 15, 2007 #
personally i think about 75% of you people posting on here are just plain ignorant. Yahoo DOES NOT CARE!

Comment by jak.lauren — August 16, 2007 #
Ive been hanging out in paltalk for a few weeks now since my last post here. i get bored, come back. look around. same shit.
people like jon whining about yahoo hackers lmao.
the day i worry about someone on chat being a hacker is the day i leave the internet. if you seriously think anyone with real skills would waste their time and risk getting in some serious trouble with the law over your dumbass, then you need to hit the x and just get the hell away from the comp.
about the only real comments ive seen on here so far is johnnyO, at least he makes some sense about it.
if you dumbasses cant get in rooms, cant get voice, blah blah blah, then try paltalk. you can make a free account just like yahoo but you can also make a room all to urself and not have to worry about some moron filling it up with spam bots. about the only program i know of on paltalk is a room greeter that people use to greet everyone when they come into the room that holds a minimum of 200! people.
get real. yahoo is a dinosaur. much like most of you people trying to post here to get yahoos attention. lmao now delete this post sarah like the weak people that you are.
screen shots will be submitted to the appropriate people to expose the way your consumers are being treated…

Comment by jak.lauren — August 16, 2007 #
yahoo HAS been hacked!It has been more screwed up the last 2 nights than I have ever seen.

Comment by pats — August 16, 2007 #
hi,
i have installed yahoo messenger. there is a problem
when i want to go to a different chatroom of the same category it takes me to the same room again and again

for eg. if i am in texas 15 room

and then i try to change the room then even though i click on a different room, it takes me to the same room as i was before.

please tell me what to do?

Comment by talkpro — August 16, 2007 #
I started chatting on Yahoo! in 1997, and it was much different. Back then, it really was the best chat hub on the internet. There was no such thing as bots, spammers, or booters. Now, Yahoo! Chat simply sucks. After reading some of these comments, it is obvious that there are people who are hell bent on writing malicious code to disrupt Yahoo! Chat no matter what. Why? To those morons, I say, get a life! —- At this point, it is plain to see that the only two ways to permanently resolve the problems that are plaguing Yahoo! Chat is to either make this a paid membership chat hub (which is Yahoo!’s grand scheme of things I do believe), or completely pull the plug altogether. Personally, I have had so many unpleasant experiences in the Yahoo! Chat rooms over the past few years that it would not bother me in the least if there was no such thing as Yahoo! Chat any longer. — YAHOO SUCKS!!!

Comment by eddie — August 17, 2007 #
i cant get into any chat rooms at all this is nuts i cant beleive this

Comment by sabrina — August 17, 2007 #
Thoughts on Third-Party Programs:

For one, I do NOT use Windows, OR mac. The official Unix client is a joke…little to no functionality, no chat rooms, heck, it hasn’t been updated in YEARS!

If Yahoo would support my platform, I STILL wouldn’t be using their messenger. Gaim doesn’t have voice or video (yet…its coming), but I’ve got multiple accounts on multiple networks, and there’s no way I’m going back to running multiple programs just to keep up with everyone on different networks.

The single-network-client days are OVER. Work together to create some good quality multi-network programs, or you forever segregate the IM sector.

When Yahoo works to actively BLOCK *MY* client, they are actively working to block ME. I’m a paying customer, and they don’t seem to care that there are legitimate users who are NOT being taken care of because of the economics of market share. Thats fine with me….but let someone else take care of me. I can use their programs and still be a good yahoo customer. Block me from IM, and you’ll see my money go elsewhere. Simple as that.

As far as the third party teams making the fixes public…..if Yahoo would have worked together with them in the first place, and not tried to kill them by blocking their core functionality, then I’m sure there could have been a non-disclosure agreement. Instead, Yahoo attacks my program developers, blocking MY client, and therefore blocking ME. If this fix HADN’T been up within such a short time, my accounts would have been DELETED.

Work to make me a good customer, or be honest, tell me you don’t want my money, and I’ll walk.

Comment by Phil — August 17, 2007 #
Ok I have been patient-the initial blog of this was posted May 25th, and here it is August 18th-let me do the math-one week shy of 3 months-and NOTHING from yahoo on what Jeff Bonforte Vice President has told us all in this blog-I just wonder when they ask for patience from their loyal yahoo fans and contributors, how much longer-AT THE VERY LEAST- we deserve something from Yahoo in almost 3 months-I know Yahoo has a very limited employee base for their chat and messenger responsibilities, but I would think everyone would agree here if you at least keep us up to date on a monthly basis-is that too much to ask for??

Comment by Mark — August 18, 2007 #
if yahoo can monter the room”s better and stop the rifraf chat wood be fun agin and get ride of the forking bot”s

Comment by spazzy_man64 — August 19, 2007 #
spazzy_man64, MSN use to do that, have “room monitors” they called them “Room Hosts” and they had the power to kick or ban people out of MSN chat rooms for any violation of MSN’s terms of service or Code of Conduct-which everyone agreed to when they opened a msn or hotmail email account and when they used that account to come into a MSN chat room-this was somewhat successful, but then these “Room Hosts” were volunteers and they could Host a MSN chat room when “they felt like it”, that helped some-but also cause alot of “chat room” problems cause just like Yahoo, MSN was not at that time a “Pay for Chat” service YET! so people could just make up another email account and come in and start harassing the other members of the chat room-Even when MSN went to the “Pay for Chat” idea-there was the same problems not just as bad-but it still happened, BUT even then the “rifraf” still were able to secure accounts and the “bot’s” still found a way to come in with their porn links, AMAZING HUH? that the web site would pay MSN, just so their ‘BOTS” would be able to come into a room and spam the room or do it through a “Private Message”-I just think Yahoo owes us a reason or a explanation as to why they haven’t updated us, going on 3 months now. Having a person monitor yahoo rooms would I believe cause more problems then they are worth-TAKE IT FROM ME-I was a Room Host for MSN, for both the FREE CHAT and the PAY FOR CHAT, and I can say it really didnt help at all-to keep the rifraf out.

Comment by Mark — August 19, 2007 #
There is at least one website that sells a yahoo bot program so I’m not surprised that the names are similar. The bot coders are just going to code around whatever fixes yahoo comes up with. Really about the only chance that yahoo has (I hate to say this) is to sue the sites advertised by the bots, and to sue the bot code sellers. If the money dries up the bots will dry up and go away

Comment by markj — August 19, 2007 #
wow you guys really fumbled the ball this time .a group of elementary kids could do a better job than you have done.i see 100 politics loby rooms all with 50 bots .so if your intention was to shut down the room “nice work boneheads”i think yahoo chat technicians need a punch in the head.if you guys cant fix the problem then put it back to the way it was and admit your incompetance,otherwise fix the room and take your bots with you

Comment by wrenchbender15 — August 19, 2007 #
please… get the captcha thing working….

i need my chat fix.

Disco Legend Zeke

Comment by disco-legend-zeke — August 20, 2007 #
l am so surprised, thankyou for keeping us informed. l never knew of this site a friend just posted it, its great to see we can come get some answers…..alot of gossip and speculation is going around.

Comment by jodee — August 20, 2007 #
omg jodee..are you ever in for a surprise..surprise surprise…you wont find answers here from Yahoo!… just more n more questions from the end user…. read n weep

Comment by Pj — August 21, 2007 #
Why get rid of the fight rooms, Its a great stress reliever for one, and for two there is already a warning at the top of the screen saying that if you dont want your feelings hurt basically this is not the room for you , come on, really people do you truely thing that getting rid of the fight rooms will solve anything. Personally i think your opening a can of worms you dont want to open. Sure if you get rid of the fight rooms there is a slim and none chance it will deter some to stop with bot running and such but think about it, if you remove a hive where do the bees go? The answer is outward to find new refuse and establish new colonies. Doing away with the fight rooms will only encourage those who enjoy them to go to the other rooms and turn them chaotic, why not let those people who get pleasure from them have them, it may not solve everything but its not creating a new problem.

Comment by valerie — August 21, 2007 #
I like to know why or when will the fight rooms be back up and running. Some of us Yahooers love the fight rooms. The only thing was the bots and booters and there was to many porn bots in there also. BRING BACK THE FIGHT ROOMS.

Comment by Kari G — August 21, 2007 #
BRING BACK THE FIGHT ROOMS, we liked it , we loved it, and dang sure want some more of it lmao, you can bet your sweet bibby that there are those of us that will NOT GO SILENTLY INTO THE NIGHT on this one.

Comment by valerie — August 21, 2007 #
The fight rooms need to come back…do you think that just because you closed the fight rooms down that all of us are just going to up and leave yahoo? NO, its not happening, the fight rooms were a great place to relieve stress and hang out with people that you got to know,i know that i myself and many many people that i talk to on yahoo would LOVE to see the fight rooms come back….BRING THE FIGHT ROOMS BACK

Comment by Lauren N — August 21, 2007 #
See there are more and more coming forth, OMG ITS A REVOLUTION!!!!!! Look out ya’ll its already starting , peeps are realizing that their right to fight is being taken away and there will be a rebelion, there will be yahoo blood and butt thrown everywhere. Pay attention Yahoo Programmers, we want our fight rooms back and we are geting short on patience waiting for them. There wasnt a dang thing wrong with them, of course there were a few that took things to the extremes but why let a few bad apples spoil the bunch. Besides like i said before , we will just spread out. LMAO WE ARE LIKE THE COCKROACHES OF A NUCULAR WAR, WE ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT WILL SURVIVE TO TAKE OVER THE REMAINS!!!!!

Comment by valerie — August 21, 2007 #
this is just for the posts asking for the fight rooms back on yahoo-CREATE A PRIVATE CONFERENCE-the fight rooms are against the TERMS OF SERVICE-because threats and people’s personal identifiable information was being disclosed-ONE QUESTION THAT NEEDS NO ANSWER-ALL OF YOU CRYING ABOUT THE FIGHT ROOMS-HAVE NOT READ THE TERMS OF SERVICE RIGHT?-LMAO- if you want to fight amongst other chatters just to relieve stress and feel better about yourself-then go into training and become a boxer – one person once said in a chat room-”fighting in chat rooms is like watching a group of idiots-nothing gets accomplished and everyone looks like a fool”- now go read the terms of service because I have and abide by it EXCEPT FOR THIS POST-so go ahead a fight with me-I can easily ignore, and walk away knowing I am a better person then the ones “attacking” me-LMBO

Comment by Mark — August 21, 2007 #
OMG Yahoo chat is totally 100% saturated with bots. Every room is pegged at 50 and no matter what room you click on it takes you to the same room over and over. Not a real user in sight. Congratulations, you have totally broken it.

Well at least now it really can’t get any worse….LOL

Comment by paddler — August 21, 2007 #
Wow, its no longer possible to use yahoo chat, because its full of bots. During the last months yahoo chat became more and more unusable. And i think the main problem are the damned bots. But why it is so easy for the bots to login into yahoo chat ? Maybe you can include a procedure into the login program code, which shows a image with distorted letters and numbers, and the user needs to enter that code together with the password to sign on. Yes automatically login is then no longer possible, but im sure that will lock out the bots, because OCR for distorted letters is really hard to do.

Thats just my 0.02$
Greets from germany

Comment by zutti — August 22, 2007 #
yahoo messenger sucks!
Bot
bOt
BoT
BOT!
theres a lot of bot!
huh im tired!
i think you need to change the name of yahoo messenger.
you need to replace it with YAHOOBOTMESSENGER!

hehe
pls do some action!

Comment by dungens — August 22, 2007 #
lol for the hundrenth time you all at yahoo are such a joke …..reducing the bots ha ha ha you cannot get into the chat rooms anymore because of the bots….now tell us something we really want to hear……..

Comment by miavia — August 22, 2007 #
Yahoo and AOL are in a race to see who can go down the toilet the fastest. I use to think AOL had a commanding lead but I was wrong. Yahoo has just pulled way in front.

Here is the deal, yahoo cannot get anything done. While google is busy thinking of new ideas IMPLEMENT them daily yahoo keeps tripping over everything in sight.

Look at their yahoo ad publishing network, still in beta stage after 3 years. Look at their webhosting tools that know longer work with windows vista. Thousands of website owners left hanging with websites that cannot update because their sitebuilder no longer works. Any now we have this mess.

I say Yahoo sell yourself to google and let them fix your mess in like one week. Isn’t that better than letting yourself die from incompetence?

Comment by dick — August 22, 2007 #
I say go back to the days of IRC/mirc and make some irc ops (JUST FOR TH CHAT) that can kinda keep an eye on the room / k-line/ban known bots and get a system like the X & W bots to let ppl register rooms and give others access to the room bots Being X & W so you can kick/ban ppl from room wouldnt take much to let ppl apply or have access to ban known bots & let rooms be registered.

Thanks

Comment by 930 — August 22, 2007 #
does this ring any bells for anyone

/msg w op FiXiT #south carolina:9

Comment by 930 — August 22, 2007 #
Wouldnt take much to have about 3 per room like 3 op’s for all the fight rooms. 3 for each state rooms as i hang in South Carolina:9 and havent been able to get in in over a week.These ppl would have to me monitored to make sure there trust worthy but it could work they would also have to be dedicated to the job.

just a thought

Comment by 930 — August 22, 2007 #
Im just curious, I have been using yahoo messenger for years. As you all know, the bots get worse by the day. But the original post for this blog was May 25th. The blog states changes would be rolled out in a month?…hmmm…Let see…isnt it Aug 22nd now? I havent seen one change in the rooms since May 25th. Wait…sorry…I have…the percentage of bots has continued to rise. I know that cause I do manage to get into a room after only 20 tries. Please dont call it yahell anymore. Its new name is Yabutt.
Jeff (VP)…you said one month this would be worked out “yeah but were working on it”…you going to eliminate bots?…yeah but it might take a few more decades….will you hire more people to work on the chat rooms?…yeah but they will be referred to us by the employment dept….do you really think thats a good idea Jeff?…yeah but we really dont want to fix this problem…doesnt it bother you that you are losing thousands if not millions of chatters?….yeah but i still get paid…does it bother you they call your company yahell?….YEAH but its better than being called AOL…lol

Comment by Mike — August 22, 2007 #
It’s sad that the forum I’ve chatted in since 1999 is now so poorly run and badly operated. There is no way to get into a specific room; and once you manange to get into any room at all, it’s full of bots and foreigners (apparently Yahell’s Middle Eastern chat is unaffected?) If I were one of the companies that ADVERTISE in chat, I’d be furious. I wonder if anyone can suggest an good alternative for those of us who enjoy chatting in a room, rather than merely using the messenger?

Comment by Sharon — August 23, 2007 #
Jeff Bonforte
Vice President
Yahoo! Messenger

If I was your boss I would walk into your office and say three words… “Jeff, your fired”

You said you could count the number of people working on yahoo chat on one hand… gee, is that something to be proud of? Nice to see every room is now filled with nothing but bots… 3 months and this is all you have to show for it? Why not just shut it down and admit defeat?

Comment by davie — August 23, 2007 #
I could care less about the fight rooms! It would be nice if the kiddies at Yahoo would get chat up and running instead of playing video games, eating donuts, and drinking coffee! This is atrocious at how bad Yahoo went in less than a month. It was bad before but since last month it really went downhill fast. Now when you try to get into a room you either get a message saying “Communication Error” or if you manage to get into a room it is nothing but bots and when you try to leave the room you can’t unless you click on a different category but then that takes you to rooms you don’t want to go to and then it is just more bots. I once thought Yahoo purposely put the bots in to test their servers but some of the bots where pm’ing me to view their web cam so I know it isn’t Yahoo doing this but that the system is broken and the bots are exploiting it for as much as they can. So Yahoo is getting sick of all these flames…well fix the damn thing and you won’t be seeing these flames but keep it in the sad shape it is in right now and Yahoo will keep getting these. Bad enough about the bots but when you finally get into a room with some real people the Yahoo servers keep rejecting your posts. Bad enough with communication errors and bots but getting rejected posts messages makes it even worse. On top of that you can’t go to the room you want to but get bounced all over the place to rooms you don’t want to even go to and then nothing but bots bots bots! Yahoo has some major issues and I am no tech but I would think the only way to fix it is to completely shut down Messenger and start from scratch with something completely different. Apparently these band aids Yahoo is trying to apply just ain’t working so they need to retire messenger and develop a completely different chat program. The techs at Yahoo with their updates are making Messenger completely useless that hardly anybody wants to use it anymore and are going to Pal Talk just so they can chat. Yahoo should think about that and get to working on fixing Yahoo.

Comment by John — August 24, 2007 #
Kudos to all the above. Between the Bots and not being able to go to regular rooms, Messenger use to be fun for this old woman. Now, when I want to say Hi to Cyberspace friends in chatrooms…I can not.
Please, fix the problem FAST! ALL the chatrooms say 50 people in them. I click on Christian Chatroom 5 and it seeds me to 80. If I click on Christian chatroom 18 it sends me to 4. Please help your loyal Yahoo members who have been with you for so long. Thank you, thanky, thx.
Diane

Comment by Forgivun — August 24, 2007 #
Please bring back the old rooms, this is getting to messed up, you go to a selected room and it takes you to another, and so on and so on. Just put it back the way it was. Keep the same style but make it where it can be like the old style.

Comment by Kari G — August 24, 2007 #
At around 9:20 P.M. EST I logged on to yahoo to find that all rooms have been restored to bot less freedom thank you yahoo!

Comment by Douglas — August 24, 2007 #
Thanks Yahoo, you get some of the rooms up for people to chat and now with all the bots getting back on in rooms, when it gets filled up with bots it boots real people out. Stop playing games, and get some real genius in the company and get this stuff up and running.

Comment by Kari G — August 27, 2007 #
I gotta say Thank You Yahoo for getting some of Chat back up and runnin………sorta. At least some rooms are doin ok, and the text error is not as bad. Gotta admit, this has been one adventure after another. Never know where u will end up or who u might meet. Good way to meet some nice people and some real jerks but such is life. I have to say I am sticking this out cause I am loyal to my great friends online. Sure the bots are still around and fill up the rooms and ID’s get stuck in rooms but it is better than last week. Keep going Yahoo, u may get there some day…I am pulling for u.

Comment by skeeter — August 28, 2007 #
how come i can not get to see and read ofher popler in chat room

Comment by davidsimijonovic — August 30, 2007 #
i logoff for a year and no teen talk what happend yahoo

Comment by wiz — August 31, 2007 #
one thing you might check on is people making thousands of id’s on one pc most ending in 1 2 3 4 etc…as the only change in the diff. nic, because all they are good for is to try or succeed in booting someone offline or off yahoo. thanks for fixing the other problems…my biggest concern in the past is those spoiling the yahoo experience by booting.

Comment by glen — September 3, 2007 #
Why can’t you guys FIX yahoo chat instead of just tinkering with it….new entry or not…no one can get in even with this new entry. It’s worse now then it was before. Thanx yahoo.

Comment by Darlene — September 4, 2007 #
hi i will only say u that when i enter in chat room there are no body in chat room soplease

Comment by saad — September 24, 2007 #
political loby is still under attack by booters and bots i was hoping this would be taken care of .next i hear they will be limiting the number of rooms available this is a terible idea especialy coming into the biggest political election of the free world.fix this stuff so its fun to use again

Comment by wrenchbender13 — September 24, 2007 #
For the last week I have had no problems going in chat rooms. Music and or people talking is working. Able to see all chatters. PM’s are working also. Didn’t see any bots. The only thing I found that is not working is posting a picture on your profile. Don’t know if this will be fixed or is gone for good.Other than that …things are looking up!

Comment by Edie — September 24, 2007 #
well think that “cleaning” did not really work as bots can still go in and out of chatrooms. so what’s the verification thing for again?

Comment by LC — September 30, 2007 #
to stop the bots from comming in the room yahoo needs to get rid of ymsg 14 and below,people are still using them room fillers,so yahoo needs to get busy and get rid of ymsg 14 and below,its a shame yahoo cant fix there chat.

Comment by markj — October 1, 2007 #
ffs yahoo, open a few more friggin rooms in the 30’s…we’re all squigged up and running out of oxygen…jeeesh!!!!

Comment by Pj — October 3, 2007 #
Seems like the bots are taking over again. Can’t get into any of the low numbered rooms because they are all full. It was good for awhile but now haven’t been able to get into regular room for 3 days.

Comment by Mick — October 5, 2007 #
Hello I have a complaint about the way Yahoo messenger is acting up the past few days.

It’s really terrible to get into any of the low numbered rooms as Mick before me already said; but when sometimes eventually (after say 40 attempts) I do get in, here’s noone there man, noone except say 3 other persistant complaining people and a handful of bots.
Then also when I sign out of the chatroom I still keep getting all kinds of messages.

I think it’s a software thing man. Possibly noone gets really signed out and thus the rooms remain full?

Fix it plllllease

Greetings from
the Birdarcade

Comment by Bert R K holland — October 6, 2007 #
YAHOO, were is yahoo? What happened to yahoo? I’ve bin on yahoo for 7 years now and can’t even get in chat any more! TRY THE LINK THEY SAY, does it work? NO WAY! two words for ayhoo, YOU SUCK!

Comment by Ruth Y — October 6, 2007 #
not gonna say ffs, not gonna say crap, not gonna say anything about how bad it is…Im justtttttttttt gonna roll my eyes!!!!

Comment by Pj — October 8, 2007 #
the chat room verification is a total failure of yahoo. the bots are still getting in. so yahoo should re – consider and stop verification process. saves our time and new people should find it more easier to join in a room.

Comment by techboy — October 11, 2007 #
How can I stop people from sending me “Offline messages” like a booter bomb? They send hundreds of offline p.m.’s all at once, and it freezes your screen and then you get booted out of the chatroom! I’m told it’s easy to “boot” someone out if they’re in the “messenger” chat client.
btw…….without clicking “Ignore everyone except the people on your friends list”. Iggying the booter doesnt stop them anyway ,when they can still bring in multiple i.d.’s.

Comment by Dana Perssico — October 13, 2007 #
What is “YMSG 14 and below?” This is the cause of all the trouble I bet!

Comment by Dana Perssico — October 13, 2007 #
dana them booters ,crackers, and room fillers use ymsg 14 and below, yahoo needs to get rid of them,i dont know why yahoo is keeping them around.

Comment by markj — October 15, 2007 #
Can Yahoo Messenger under Mac OS be booted?

Comment by Funny — October 21, 2007 #
it’s fine

Comment by nini — November 8, 2007 #
Ok, I don’t know if anyone reads this thing anymore, but I believe I was the one who originally said to put a room administrator in each room with the ability to boot all the bots. (secret suggestion there prez)
Will this ever happen? Who knows, but its happening all over with rooms filled with bots.
Good luck

Comment by Carl — November 12, 2007 #
spammers r now working again, have seein many spammers in the chat room – they r working fine , changing rooms, sending pm, mess in the room – same spammer spamming multiple rooms, yahoo sux. yahoo plz remove this captcha coz spammer r working fine instead of this captcha.
while regular users r facing problems like delay and slow speed.

Comment by Aghori Baba — November 15, 2007 #
Yahoo plz remove this captcha, regular users are facing lot of problems.

Comment by Spice Mobile — November 15, 2007 #
constantly getting pm boot bombs. I did not have this problem when yahoo messenger allowed you to not allow pms but still let you see chat dialog in the rooms. This needs to stop.I am constantly being sent these pm boots and I send the copy of the the information from the log file, yet the same person keeps bombing me and yahoo does nothing.It would help if you enabled chatters to block all instant messages while in chat yet still being able to see the chat dialog in the chat rooms.

Comment by Tinkscousin — November 17, 2007 #
i think yahoo needs to get rid of chat all together because the programmers that makes the booters are smarter than the yahoo engineers and it sucks that you cant get into some of the rooms now because of the room lockers and the spam bots has found its way back into the rooms right now yahoo chat sucks big time now.

Comment by markj — November 18, 2007 #
I have read through just about all the comments on this blog, and I must say… Goodluck fixing anything! I have been a programmer for 7 years, and to be honest, no matter what Yahoo! does to try and fix chat, stop booters, kill the bots, etc… People will always find a way to exploit it. As for people ranting about 3rd party chat clients, if Yahoo! could make a decent client most users would not resort to a 3rd party client packed with features, and with beefed up client side security measures to help filter bots, spam, and booters. I have written several chat clients/servers for many different companies, and I will say that one of the biggest problems Yahoo! made was dumping a large majority of their rooms as well as user rooms. Now the bots have a smaller location to gather, thus making them fill up the rooms quicker. Also, when you can take and post the seperator/delimiter of a chat packet into the room and it boots you but locks your name… that doesn’t really help matters either. Incase you didn’t know about this (yahoo employee’s), simply enter this into the room…. À€ . Having that lock names in a room for a long time (allowing the user to login a new one just to do it again….and again……..and again) is just about as bat as the old java boot code ALT+0144[X that haunted java chat for a good couple of years. I mean GET REAL YAHOO! I think it is quite obvious that us fellow programmers who also chat on Yahoo!, and those who simply code just to code Yahoo! tools are far more intelligent than your 5 (god forbid, please don’t fire anyone, you need all the help you can get!) techs working to re-face your whole client/server Maybe you should consider popping into your chat rooms once in awhile and find some people who know more about your software than you do, then maybe Yahoo! Chat will work it’s way back to the top. Until then, stop changing protocols, stop updating pager to even more broken versions, and start fixing something for a change!

- Jay

Comment by Jay — December 2, 2007 #
One more thing, for those who are wanting a stable version of messenger, find a download for version 5.51228 or 6.1. As for a a client, get YahELite

- Jay

Comment by Jay — December 2, 2007 #
One final note, remove the stupid captcha. That was a good security feature YEARS ago. It no longer does a thing, if you are good enough to sniff the whole yahoo protocol, I’m pretty sure those same people are smart enough to send a simple “GET”, “http://ab.login.yahoo.com/img/” & TestData & “.jpg” request to your server, and open the captcha image in a picture box for verification. On top of that, there are so many open source OCR projects that anyone could make this automated for the use of bots.

The captcha image simply drives everyone nuts, and is doing absolutely nothing for you except making your chat portal worse.

- Jay

Comment by Jay — December 2, 2007 #
Yahoo! is lying to you all they arnt doing anything to fix chat
they are getting money from the pornbot site owners yahoo cares more about the money then there users with them adding the captcha they hope to kill the rest of the people that stayed around after killing off user rooms you can ask em about it all but they would lie to you and say its not true ask why it has taken this long to get anything done

Comment by Jester — December 10, 2007 #
Anyone else having problems logging into yahoo from the UK?

Comment by Lily — December 12, 2007 #
wtf is up with yahoo now cant even get nothing to work its been whacked for 8 hours now .i really cant understand why this is such a hard thing to keep up and running.any way my comment is that if yahoo is not running porn bots where are they comming from?yep you guessed it theyre flooding the email.nice work guys.i for one dont like yahoo selling my info to anyone but thats exactly whats going on.the chat problems are still here but obviosly yahoo isnt interested in fixing chat just continuing to be a blood sucking leach that is being paid for a service that it is barely providing.when i pay my isp bill thats what pays for yahoo i fail to see why they have a handfull of techs and that is all they see necessary to keep chat up and running.just because you call it a “free service” dosnt mean that people should have to have crap for service.now get on the stick boys and dedicate a special team to keeping yahoo chat running around the clock spend the money youve got it .i pay it every month

Comment by wrenchbender15 — December 14, 2007 #
Dear

I have a problem. Some one is sending me over 100 yahoo ID at a time, can u tell me does it possible. He make me crazy. But that man/women is enjoing the trick.

Thanking

you

Shishir

Comment by Shishir — January 27, 2008 #
chatroom error.voice error

Comment by kowsalya — February 21, 2008 #
Would it be possible to send every yahoo chat member one capcha login that works like a password?The captcha did not work at keeping out bots,it only made more frustration for the decent poeple who love the chat rooms.The captcha is scrambled looking most of the time and ya end up typing it wronge.At the very least can you make it readable to us?Also,I have reported the people making the bot names in the rooms many many times,using thier real yahoo id,not thier bot names,can yahoo not fine these people or disconnect them from chat all together?

Comment by bj — May 15, 2008 #
So it has been over a year since this post. I just un-installed yahoo chat again after only using it for (maybe) 30 minutes. Simply put, all the bots did were annoy me, all the capcha did was make me authenticate every time I went into a room. At one point, I actually timed how may bot requests for cams I got in a 60 second time frame, want to guess, 54, that is almost 1 per second. This is worse that ever, and one of the reasons I went back to IRC with moderators, face it, you cannot have good chat without human moderation. You cannot script everything.

So now you have had a year to roll out these “changes”, what happened?

My suggestion? Simple..stop, take down chat rooms all together, simply make messenger better, but don’t offer services that you cannot seem to get right. You lost the war, the bots won, so call time of death and move on with your life.

Comment by Chris — July 22, 2008 #
I just came across this post! You guys aren’t paying any attention to your customers, I understand you have billions of them and it’s impossible to understand them all, but I honestly see that you are loosing them. People hardly ever use yahoo mail for business or as their main email adress… They have switched to other clients..
Now about chat rooms! They are all filled with bots. Few years back, there were real, intellectual people chatting there. After closing user chat rooms people simply stopped going there, nobody even knew they were closing, they just kept going “hey do are you having problem getting to the room” It is not how costumer oriented company acts! Most people used yahoo because of the chat rooms, and yahoo was special to them, they loved yahoo, there is no other company that has same kind of atittude towards them today yet they at least offer you the product that works and don’t hide, react and announce if something is wrong! I honestly think you should pay more attention to chat rooms after all it was yahoo’s most popular product the reason why people loved it, and people were loyal to the company’s other products too.. Ignoring this issue will not do any good…
I hope at least somebody out there reads this…

Comment by Ta — September 20, 2008 #
why did you have to mess with the profiles, i dont want people finding me searching for me and scuh, i just like to chat in the room only, i dont see what was wrong with profiles the way they were, and the way they were before you can tell who was a bot and who wasnt by the link on their profile. and men never look at profiles to read them they just see if theres a pic there or not if anything . so i suggest you put profiles back the way they were, besides i cant get mine to work and i did everything those directtions and settings told me, btw on the front page of profile there is no yellow banner. until you go to settings and such, and nothing works unless you want to invite everyone to the page is my guess. and i dont like adding people, but they should be able to see my profile anyways, and as far as 3rd party chat clients like yahelite i like it because i dont get pms. remember you never fixed that setting to work. you could not see the chat room at all when you clicked ignore anyone not on your list, you could not see anyone in the room typing. so. anyways .. alot of people complained about that, but never brought the issue to you, although i have a few times. thank you for listening, and hope that you simplify things and do go back to the old profiles, i will not be getting a betta messenger i like the one i have now thank you have a nice day

Comment by lexie — October 23, 2008 #
Chatroom state of the art!!!! Haha. Have you been to Yahoo chatrooms lately? Why did Yahoo stop the 3 hours login capcha expires? Once again most Yahoo chatrooms in Yahoo Regional are locked by Room Locker bots because Yahoo stop the 3 hours login Capcha verification expires. Why?

Comment by Rebby — September 6, 2009 #
I think putting that captcha code in is none sence. it hasent helped at all. To me all it has done is made alot of people angry.I have used yahoo messenger for 10 years now and as i see it as they days go on the more crap yahoo puts on there messenger service. i think they need to bring back the chatrooms they took a way. i think they need to get rid of the captcha code crap and think of a diffrent way to keep the darn bots out of the room. To me i think yahoo is not putting enough thought in to it when they push out new versions of yahoo. i think they need to really sit down and ask the the comunity what they would like and what they would want done and go from there.

Comment by Keith — January 10, 2010 #