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Chat rooms: State of the Union

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

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

378 Comments »

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

    Comment by gothicmemberyoda — May 25, 2007 #

  2. 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 #

  3. 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 #

  4. 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 #

  5. Go, Jeff! Awesome news! Long live Messenger.

    Comment by mrbigdeal — May 25, 2007 #

  6. 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 #

  7. Venom,

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

    Comment by Chris — May 25, 2007 #

  8. 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 #

  9. 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 #

  10. 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 #

  11. Chris - How are chat clients a problem?

    Comment by Mike — May 25, 2007 #

  12. 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 #

  13. 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 #

  14. 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 #

  15. 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 #

  16. 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 #

  17. 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 #

  18. 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 #

  19. 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 #

  20. 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 #

  21. 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 #

  22. 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 #

  23. 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 #

  24. 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 #

  25. 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 #

  26. 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 #

  27. no more bots? no more TYK pro……bad for ADAM’S business lol

    Comment by Q — May 26, 2007 #

  28. 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 #

  29. 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 #

  30. 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 #

  31. 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 #

  32. 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 #

  33. 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 #

  34. 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 #

  35. 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 #

  36. 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 #

  37. Yay Close the fight rooms

    Comment by SpiderMan — May 27, 2007 #

  38. 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 #

  39. 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 #

  40. correction i pray over a lot of people,,, i usely type to fast LOL. sorry.

    Comment by Pastor rex — May 27, 2007 #

  41. 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 #

  42. Bring back “Chat” in “Messenger” for UK & Ireland users please?

    Comment by Scott — May 27, 2007 #

  43. 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 #

  44. 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 #

  45. 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 #

  46. 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 #

  47. You guys need to have the chat rooms moderaterd that way there wont be any problems..

    Comment by Chris — May 27, 2007 #

  48. “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 #

  49. 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 #

  50. Dave - I did read, The only problem with chargeing for chat, Who would use it?

    Comment by Chris — May 28, 2007 #

  51. Did you mean International Support for the blog. if you did you should have said blog.

    Comment by Chris — May 28, 2007 #

  52. 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 #

  53. 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 #

  54. vb_packets what is with the website you provided on your name? The page has been deleted.

    Comment by Chris — May 28, 2007 #

  55. 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 #

  56. 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 #

  57. 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 #

  58. 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 #

  59. 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 #

  60. 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 #

  61. 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 #

  62. 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 #

  63. 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 #

  64. 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 #

  65. 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 #

  66. 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 #

  67. 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 #

  68. 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 #

  69. Thanks, Chris!

    Comment by Robin — May 29, 2007 #

  70. 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 #

  71. 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 #

  72. 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 #

  73. 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 #

  74. 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 #

  75. 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 #

  76. 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 #

  77. 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 #

  78. 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 #

  79. If control p signus us out of Messenger, what is the hot key to print screen?

    Comment by Jim Vaglia — May 31, 2007 #

  80. 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 #

  81. 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 #

  82. 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 #

  83. 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 #

  84. 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 #

  85. Thanks, I love you

    Comment by dewb — June 1, 2007 #

  86. when is yahoo messanger for windows vista going to be ready to go?

    Comment by joe — June 1, 2007 #

  87. 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 #

  88. 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 #

  89. 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 #

  90. 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 #

  91. 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 #

  92. 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 #

  93. 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 #

  94. 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 #

  95. 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 #

  96. :-??

    Comment by vb_packets — June 4, 2007 #

  97. 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 #

  98. 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 #

  99. i m computer operator. i m working in construction company. i m living in the yerwada.

    Comment by anand — June 5, 2007 #

  100. 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 #

  101. 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 #

  102. Oh and FREE USB dongles for already paying customers (launch, personals, etc)

    Comment by Mike C. — June 5, 2007 #

  103. 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 #

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

    Comment by Kimi — June 6, 2007 #

  105. 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 #

  106. 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 #

  107. 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 #

  108. 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 #

  109. 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 #

  110. 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 #

  111. 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 #

  112. Bring back the User Rooms.

    Comment by __Shadows — June 7, 2007 #

  113. 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 #

  114. 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 #

  115. 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 #

  116. 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 #

  117. 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 #

  118. Very simple

    ADD A FREAKING CAPTCHA TO THE CHAT LOGIN PROCESS SOMEWHERE

    BINGO, DONE & DONE

    Comment by jason — June 7, 2007 #

  119. 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 #

  120. 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 #

  121. 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 #

  122. 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 #

  123. 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 #

  124. 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 #

  125. 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 #

  126. 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 #

  127. 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 #

  128. 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 #

  129. 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 #

  130. 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 #

  131. 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 #

  132. 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 #

  133. OH and i also forgot…BRING BACK THE OPTION TO FOLLOW PEOPLE!

    Comment by justin m — June 9, 2007 #

  134. 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 #

  135. “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 #

  136. “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 #

  137. “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 #

  138. 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 #

  139. 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 #

  140. “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 #

  141. 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 #

  142. 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 #

  143. Its already summer. Any date on new mac beta? I hope its has video voice chat.

    Comment by Hemen — June 11, 2007 #

  144. 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 #

  145. 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 #

  146. 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 #

  147. 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 #

  148. “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 #

  149. 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 #

  150. 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 #

  151. 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 #

  152. 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