Yahoo! Messenger Blog

New entry process for chat rooms

August 29, 2007 on 9:32 am | In Features |

Hi everyone,

To help reduce the number of automated bots, we’ve implemented a new process for entering the Yahoo! Messenger chat rooms known as Captcha. Captcha is used elsewhere on Yahoo! in places like Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Games to help verify that a user is in fact human rather than an automated bot. Here’s how it works in the Yahoo! Messenger chat rooms…

Once you’ve chosen a Yahoo! Messenger chat room, you’ll be put into an empty room (no text, no list of chatters) and see a chat message in the room from a user named “Messenger Chat Admin”. The message will contain a link that says: “Please click here to verify your account. This step is required before you can begin chatting”. Click the link and a new window entitled “Chat Room Verification” will open. Then enter the characters that match the letters and/or numbers in the Captcha test graphic. After successfully completing the Captcha test, you’ll be returned to the chat room and see a confirmation message: “Congratulations! Your account is verified and you now have access to chat rooms”. Then just start chatting!

A Captcha test is required each time you enter a room, not just when you start a session in the chat rooms. While we realize this may slow down your ability to switch rooms quickly, this extra security is needed to help reduce the number of bots.

This new process for entering chat rooms was introduced specifically to ward off the automated bots that have become frequent, unwelcome visitors in our chat rooms. We appreciate your patience as we implement this new feature and hope that it will result in a fun (and less bot-filled) chat experience.

Thanks,

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

585 Comments

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Thanks for the update Sarah.

Comment by Infinite Luta — August 29, 2007 #
Hurrah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you all for finally tackling the bots! It works great!!!!!!!!

I see that Seattle now only has 2 rooms and doesn’t need 50 or 100 just to handle the bots. We had only 2 bots in the room.

I bet your chat server load is nil now.

Well done!

Comment by Steve — August 29, 2007 #
well it works.. but not with ytunnel…

Comment by unhappy — August 29, 2007 #
Captcha works just fine with Ytunnel. I use Ytunnel all the time and don’t have any problems signing in.

Comment by Storm Watcher — August 29, 2007 #
Thanks for finally addressing the bot issue. How great it is to finally see a room without all the porn garbage!!

I only found one problem……the live idiots that send an IM or cam invitation the minute they enter a room can now get thru because the ….”Ignore anyone not on my friends list” doesn’t work as it once did. Selecting that option also blocks text in the room for anyone not on my list. In the past it only blocked IM’s from people not on your friends list.

I’ve changed many preferences and so far haven’t found a solution to block unwanted IM’s and cam invitations from those not on my friends list and still see text in a room.

If anyone has the solution, please post!

Comment by Bravo Yahoo! — August 29, 2007 #
Well I see most of the bots are gone, for now. There’s still a few and more entering as the hours go by. Captcha’s can be defeated so it won’t be long before the rooms are pretty much back to the same.

Of course I have seen a few comments on forums from sight impaired. The captcha’s have done a great job of eliminating them from the chat rooms, but then there’s very few of them using the voice features in chat rooms so who cares right ?

I wish more companies would think of the average person more when they design or modify programs/features. It be a lot nicer world if they did.

That’s just my 2 cents before taxes.

Comment by KBSoftware — August 29, 2007 #
Yahoo Inc,

CAPTCHA is really good idea to implement. Im really that this day came and many thanks for this new system of verification.

Only thing that upset me a bit is the time I get DISCONNECTED in the room which hopefully you Yahoo Engineers can solve this issues for us.

When this DISCONNECTION happens, I get this and its really annoying, Im sure some dont want this kind of issues. Obviously we have to re-enter the room and do the verification again.

“You have been signed out of Chat. If you want to sign in again, please join a room.(8/29/2007 6:02 PM)”

Comment by Dave (Yahoo Chat Fanatic) — August 29, 2007 #
Well done Sarah …

A thumbs up from me

Comment by Ian — August 29, 2007 #
Im really happy that is.

If we get DISCONNECTED can you guys make Yahoo Messenger to auto-reconnect the room we were in?

Comment by Dave (Yahoo Chat Fanatic) — August 29, 2007 #
The captcha idea seems like a nice fix. However, I still was denied entry into the chat rooms. Thanks for nothing! Beside, I am not satisfied that this will really stop these bots. When can I use IM? Since the day after I downloaded the program your servers went down and I have been unable to use it since. This includes your claim that the problem is fixed, “Just enter the letters that you see on the screen and then go and chat”, NO I CAN’T! This still doesn’t work. I get the same error messages that I have been getting for a week. I’m ready to junk yahoo and find an IM that really works.

Comment by Michael — August 29, 2007 #
I’m happy that bots are gone.

But God I wish there was a different solution.

Comment by Jaunty Mellifluous — August 29, 2007 #
my messenger is disconnected whenever im back at the pc. i find it quite annoying. I hope yahoo offer a premium service soon to remove CAPTCHA

Comment by vb_packets — August 29, 2007 #
wow i’m loving the new captcha chat…it’s just crazy to chat with out bots..i’m so not used to it! i haven’t experienced chat like this since i first started to chat back in 04..and even then there was still a few bots..this is so nice. thank you yahoo.

Comment by Justin — August 29, 2007 #
This is a GREAT temporary solution!

Comment by Mart — August 29, 2007 #
THANK YOU!!!! The system is working great so far. The only issue I see right now, is that there are two sets of the same rooms in the “Romance/By Location” rooms. All of the states are listed twice. The first set lists all of the ACTUAL rooms that are available, whereas the second set lists ALL rooms, but the ones not listed in the 1st set aren’t actually available to join. Simply because the other rooms haven’t filled up yet & they don’t really ‘exist’.

In the future will we be able to join say… “Your State:5″ even if the room is empty? Because as of right now it’s not possible. Just a “User Refused Join” error.

Comment by Parry Hotter — August 29, 2007 #
Hey people don’t be so fast to celebrate. The capthca has been already cracked I see a bot in the room im in right now. They are slowly making their way back in. The hackers are busy rewriting the bot programs to crack the captcha.

Comment by Ray — August 29, 2007 #
Bravo

Comment by Ian Kenefick — August 29, 2007 #
Captcha works fine. But I have a suggestion. Bots can still obtain voice chat without being verified. It’d be nice if you change it that nobody can obtain voice chat UNTIL they are verified. =)

Comment by Venom — August 29, 2007 #
Ray, a single bot probably means a bot maker input the code for the bot to enter chat. Personally, I haven’t seen a single bot yet. =)

Comment by Venom — August 29, 2007 #
we should not be forced to use want you want us to it should be our choice if we want to use it or not this is supposed to be america the land of the free just leave yahoo the hell alone

Comment by wildchild — August 29, 2007 #
Bravo!

Comment by zx — August 29, 2007 #
Yes I agree with Venom. The captcha verification although is doing its job there are some flaws already discovered.

Its a Big Chat Exploit already in the making. Bots can login to voice chat without actually joining chatroom through captcha verification and can mass ignore the user already on voice in that chatroom and hence give that user who is running these bots power to step on the user who was previously on voice and was being ignored by these bots in mass.

Yahoo has to fix this sooner rather than later

Comment by Rick — August 29, 2007 #
i see a bot in the room LOL so much for CAPTCHA cam_sheena62 seems to get through LOL ROFL

Comment by miranda — August 29, 2007 #
Thank You !!
Now we just need some functionality that allows us to move between rooms with no need for additional’verification’.
@unhappy>>ytunnel does appear to work,with the proviso that Some functions Currently do not..check their website for further info

a small price to pay??

Comment by tom — August 29, 2007 #
KBSoftware:

You’re being unreasonable. Either we use the CAPTCHA and we chat.. or we don’t and let the bots ruin it all. Which choice will it be?

Don’t ruin chat just because a few can’t see the CAPTCHA. Your best bet is to ask for an audio CAPTCHA as an option rather than complain and try to ruin it for the rest of us.

Comment by bots-b-gone — August 29, 2007 #
Yahoo needs a new Captcha generator or rooms will be filled with bots in 1 week.

Watch and see.

Comment by Mike — August 29, 2007 #
well things are better now but some odd problems as if some times when users leave the the room then come back lots of the times you cant see them or hear them then your walking over them some times to see them you will have to leave the room and come back then you can see them it don’t do it all the time but most of the time we did testing in Yahoo! Chat Help:1 last night and we had nothing but problems with that other then that things are good

now as for bots yeah its true the bots cant get in the room but now what ppl are doing is trying to fill up a room but it cant get in to the room but now they get voice bots as before you still enter in a room with clicking on the link they still get voice and they key up in the chat room you can still hear them just key up for a sec then off but they go throw each one for the sec then it cuts it off , so wont it be better to have it if you enter in a room you cant get voice to load tell you click on the link and enter the code in then you can get voice when you enter in the room i think that would be better also note when users try to bring there bots in a room and cant heres 1 other thing in a room when they leave you see this all the time
left the room
left the room
left the room
left the room
left the room
left the room
left the room
left the room
left the room
other then that things are good so yous need to fix some things its getting there

Comment by Cisco — August 29, 2007 #
lol they finally get something done about the bots and to some its still not good enough…… how about the ones that dont like what yahoo is doing .. DONT GO TO YAHOO!! it wasnt that hard to understand lol

Comment by Wolf — August 29, 2007 #
Thank you so Much for getting rid of the bots, the CAPTCHA is a piece of cake and well worth the small amount of time to enter the rooms for the sake of no bots to speak of. Finally we can chat, imagine that actually chatting in a chat room!!!!

Comment by Dave — August 29, 2007 #
The “left the room” issue is because the servers are sending empty room leave packets, without the ID.

Comment by Venom — August 29, 2007 #
Thank you, Sarah… thumbs up

Comment by Missy — August 29, 2007 #
ok i can deal with the code … it is a bit annoying when your sick of one room and want to bounch to another… but i can live with it. My question …. Is yahoo going to only have a few rooms per catagory and then when those get filled open another, I think they should just have x amount per catagory. Let people have the choice of what room they want to go into and chat. Also are the rooms under the Voice Chat Catagory ever going to open back up ??????? There were good room to go to !!!!!!! Since Yahoo has decided to do this drastic update none of those rooms have been open. It would get a lot of unwanted people out of other rooms and back where they want to be.
Does any one want to take bets on how long it will be before a program is written to get the bots back into the rooms? Either way open up all of the other rooms and let us enjoy them while we can

Comment by rebel — August 29, 2007 #
some bots are in rooms I’ve seen like 5. but as venom said owners probably testing bot in room and typed code for em. thus why 5 vs 5000.

I also noticed the bugs with join and others not getting voice or text from all other users in room. probably an out of sync error from the waiting room. this is a huge bug needing fix

same with voice without verification is a huge exploit glitch.

audio captchas would be nice too

but a step in right direction. bravo

Comment by mysticalos — August 29, 2007 #
Sarah, thanks for all your recent efforts in trying to fix Chat! Without bots, you’ve probably eliminated about 99% of your server load… so could you please start adding more rooms from which to choose, now that you’ve got plenty of server space on which to host them? I’ve been trying to get the deleted X-Files room reinstated for over a year now, but all I get in return is frustrating (and usually irrelevant) computer-generated form-letter replies. Just in the last couple of days, Yahoo has deleted the two other rooms we XF “refugees” have been using, and the dozens of other possible replacement rooms I’ve tried reaching have been deleted too; since Yahoo long ago took away user-created rooms, I don’t know where else to turn. My apologies if this isn’t the proper venue for making this request, but it seems like the only chance I’ll ever have of getting a “live person” at Yahoo to read it, and you seem dedicated to actively improving Chat. Thanks.

Comment by Julie — August 29, 2007 #
Also the issues with the only able to chat once per session needs to be addressed, along with IDs being stuck in rooms, and the communication error issue, not to mention other issues.

Comment by Venom — August 29, 2007 #
it may have some bugs….but this is SO MUCH better than what it was…thanks for working on it yahoo….maybe people will start coming back now….thumbs up…

Comment by Chatter — August 29, 2007 #
Thanks Sara and staff. Its great to not see all those bots and the porn they send.
thanks again for the good job

Comment by ck — August 29, 2007 #
This is great, but it would be VERY nice to be able to change rooms without having to go through the verification process every time. Once you’re in chat, you should be able to change rooms without the CAPTCHA test every time!

Comment by mw00db — August 29, 2007 #
I really Appriciated Yahoo’s this step that is against bots with captcha Yahoo is doing just in right way.

Well whatever Lets see whats the yahoo next step I thinl yahoo will also try to Reduce this time comsuming methord with more easy methord

Thanks to yahoo This is need of Time and situation

Hope yahoo will soon become like Early times free from bots

But What to those who are human being and they use to abuses in rooms ?????

By Captcha yahoo can stop Bots ( mainly abusive bots as i am a regular Hinduism and Indian rooms chatter and always use to see abusive bots) but how to stop those who are real human but abusers.

Yahoo should also work in this field.

Comment by Abhishek Anand — August 29, 2007 #
A discussion I had earlier about “bots” obtaining voice therefore bypassing the Captcha system altogether:

Mass ignoring is still alive regardless of this captcha system. The reason why is because when the pseudo-room list (partial | 2 user) is sent to you with the Yahoo id & captcha link all the necessary fields are in place for voice logins without even having to verify through the captcha system. Verifying through the captcha is just for chatting (sending text) and receiving it (even though at the moment you can “ghost” and receive joins, leaves and room messages without even having been verified/joined into the room).

The voice cookie is sent to you along with the room space # and room name in the first “pseudo”-room list and this is all it takes for mass ignore bots to log into voice, receive the entire voice user list and mass ignore new voice arrivals and/or broadcaster keyups on the mic. This can easily be verified by:

A> Voicing in Messenger prior to authenticating through the captcha (which you CAN do).

B> Sniffing the YMSG and voice packets yourself for evidence.

Comment by Adam [Torseq Tech] — August 29, 2007 #
Wow the fix is great, it’s crazy how amazing it is…

Is there Any way that once you verified you wouldn’t have to verify again..or maybe you just have to verify every 2nd room change or so?

Comment by MissKim — August 29, 2007 #
Bravo!!!! well done yahoo team i always knew u guys will come up of something!!!! nOw whose the BOOSS???!!! eat that!!! yahoo terrorist ur day of fun is over!!!! lol….yahoo rules the chat room!!!!

someone said its a temporary solution lol i don’t think so! the method is known way back a couple of months ago craig knows this and im sure other 3rd party programers as well and guess what? they have not develop a program that could bypass the captcha!!!! sorry to blow ur bubble dude!!!!

and im pretty sure right now yahoo has another trick just in case this method is bypassed! that’s it yahoo show them whose the boss when it comes to yahoo CHAT!!!!!

…im still looking for the day that no 3rd party client can log-in and all of us will be using yahoo messenger but for the time being this update is enough!!!!

Comment by araham lincoln — August 29, 2007 #
so ur point ADAM is that mass iggy still works flawlessly? i haven’t use that program but i thought u can’t get the mic user list if ur master boot is not in chat room…but yah maybe if they come up with something maybe they can bypass the captcha…..anyways i know yahoo will deal with these morons soon…..just wait and see…

Comment by araham lincoln — August 29, 2007 #
Thanks for this fix. I am legally blind, and can still access flawlessly. Its VERY nice to not have the bots en mass in the rooms, Please continue work to … a: prosecute those stealing advertising dollars by using bots b: keep researching to close security exploits before this situation is undone.and the rooms are flooded again.

Comment by Julie — August 29, 2007 #
NICE JOB CLEANING UP THE ROOMS. I really didn’t think you were going to do it.

Pity there has to be a Captcha on every room change. Seems there should be one to get into chat and from there you can roam freely. Small price to pay I guess and far less annoying than the bots.

Will be interesting to see how long it takes them to hack their way back in.

Seems the /join function no longer works so I have to pick rooms from the list, which isn’t always populated.

Comment by paddler — August 29, 2007 #
all you asking for one verification and that’s it are missing the point. if the captcha was easy. bots would still flood the rooms. remember. you go through one captcha when you created an account already. but if you only have to do it once clearlt bot makers are willing to go that far since once its done and over with they can have that bot stay in chat all day spamming automated. but if you get bugged every time you join chat or change rooms it can’t be left automated after initial captcha. see point now? it has to be complicated if its going to be useful. so either learn to get used to it or keep whining and yahoo can let the bots come back in.

Comment by mysticalos — August 29, 2007 #
thank you thankyou thank you.
you guys a great

Comment by bruce — August 29, 2007 #
paddler. join works. its just case senseitive. you Must type it exactly as room name is with caps. if you get user refused join then your room isn’t open yet use a lower number. if your room is room 1 then join without number to reopen the room

Comment by mysticalos — August 29, 2007 #
This is nuts I still bots on the room. .I knew the catptcha wouldnt work that well.

Comment by Ray — August 29, 2007 #
well that was obvious. see the bot makers can still type a captcha in then park bot in one room. long as it posts once in a while it’ll stay in room. think that was idea behind 65 min disconnect timer. someone may have patience to type a few codes out and just not have their bots change rooms if they will stay in them. however from my testing last night the 65 min timer went away. that needs to be brought back as well as much of a pain it is…thatll make the bots have to redo captcha every hour too. it really won’t be worth it to be a spammer then.

Comment by mysticalos — August 29, 2007 #
I get the verification message after entering the code and nothing happens period other then close the browser and start chatting and I can’t. Also I have not had text for days. I could talk on the mic and hear others but that was the extent of it up until today. Today nadda.

Comment by piece — August 29, 2007 #
Piece, do you have “Ignore anyone who is not on my Messenger List” selected under Yahoo’s Preferences > Ignore List?

Comment by Venom — August 29, 2007 #
ITS SO STUPID DOING CHAT ROOM VERIFICATION EVERY TIME CHANGING ROOM, THIS SHOULD BE CHANGED

Comment by padric — August 29, 2007 #
No Venom I don’t but ty. I do appreciate it.

Comment by piece — August 29, 2007 #
Venom- just to let you know - not since version 7.0437 has the “ignore anyone who is not on my Messenger list” have you been able to use that option and still see the rest of the text in the room..sometimes you cannot even hear those who are not on your lists voices, so having that option does not solve the issue of needing to leave your IM’s completely open to see all the text — and yes the bots may be gone but booters sadly are not.. nor are the “lovelorn” so it seems..

My second comment is one I posted on the other blog - I DO have two friends who due to a handicap cannot read the text no matter the size– they know when I usually come on-line and wait for me to invite them into a room, at which time they use the voice option to chat — how can we work around this Captcha system to enable those like them who need assistance??

Thanks for your hard work — be chatting at ya!

Comment by Charged — August 29, 2007 #
Not that this will help, piece, but I had to download 7.5 messenger… then I could see text in rooms. I had 6.0 and it worked for voice, but not text.

Comment by n0vice — August 29, 2007 #
hey Sarah, I like this idea but will or when will the higher number rooms be open can you let us know about this ???

I’m in a higher number chat room and would hope it will be open again .

Comment by Julianna — August 29, 2007 #
Just to remind some whiners: the captcha has to be on room join otherwise it won’t be effective. Bot owners would just sign them in once and let them run wild all day or until their connection dropped.

With a captcha check on room join, the bot owner is forced to keep the bot in one room. When it stays in one room, I CAN IGNORE IT. The reason you couldn’t ignore them before is because they kept moving around. They wold join, spam the room, and then leave.

I just WISH there was an option to ignore ALL PMs from users not in the room and a second option to ignore ALL PMs from users in the room. Both of those options would give us control over who can private message us.

It would also be nice to have an option to ignore ALL communication from a user’s IP address. So, if I want to ignore Bob_01, it will automatically ignore Bob_boot_bot_01, Bob_boot_bot_02, Bob_boot_bot_03, etc because they’re all coming from the same IP address. This could be done server-side to hide IP addresses of chatters. That would solve most booting.

The ignore everyone not on my Friend list is USELESS to me. How do you make new chat friends if you’re ignoring everyone?

Comment by bots-b-gone — August 29, 2007 #
Welldone guys…

You have taken something that worked a little, and completly screwed it up..

This is on top of IM software thats as buggy as anything.

So now I get verified, but there is nobody in the room when I get there.

Also verifying for each time you change room, get real. I am guessing that you won’t have many users left if you don’t get you act together.

So 9/10 for intent, 0/10 for implementation. You get my dippers of the year award.

Comment by solarguy — August 29, 2007 #
I love that we have no bots ! But last night some of the regs from a 50’s room were forced to go to a lower numbered room , we were playing music as we had always done in our room , then the rooms regs came in , they had been there for years apparently as we had been in ours , we were playing music , having a grand time , and they came in like a mounted posse spewing obscenities , stepped on our music , we were told in vile ways to leave their room if we didn’t like their behavior . It was their room . We did all leave and went to another room because we are a peace loving bunch . I would like to have our rooms back please as they were . I don’t mind the verification part . even tho within 1 hour i was bounced 5 times , and find myself having to re-verify myself so many times only to sit in a blank chatroom looking at the four white walls with a yahoo admin staring back at me lol

Please Yahoo , fix it all .

Patiently awaiting and only partially impressed
~.shine.~

Comment by shine — August 29, 2007 #
Hello & thank you for the update. Y’all are doing a fine job with chat rooms. I really like it ! Thanks again & keep up the good work.

Comment by One — August 29, 2007 #
I think Yahoo has made a good move to deploy the CAPTCHA system. However, it should have been made such that no voice cookies can be obtained until the user has correctly entered the CAPTCHA code. Otherwise, mass iggy bots will still be plenty and filling up rooms like before.

Comment by Lu Chin — August 29, 2007 #
hey guys at ytk mind your own business ok thanks.

Comment by chats back — August 29, 2007 #
Works great so far. No bots at all!! Hope it stays that way.

Comment by allanmn — August 29, 2007 #
Charged, thanks for the tip but I already knew that.

Comment by Venom — August 29, 2007 #
chats back, nobody from YTK is saying anything here, nor was it mentioned until you said it.

Me, I’m here to see what’s going on, and see if I can help with any issues people post. =)

Comment by Venom — August 29, 2007 #
bots-b-gone

You would not think I was being unreasonable if you were the one who just lost the ability to use yahoo chat because of your disability. If this had happened anywhere else other then on the internet the * would hit the fan as it should.

There are other very effective ways to deal with bots without denying (or making it nearly impossible) anyone else access to yahoo chat rooms. Just check out many other chat programs that offer chat rooms to see how they have dealt with bots.

Captcha’s won’t solve the bot problem either. There’s a ton of bot id maker programs that don’t require you to enter the captcha when creating a yahoo id, the program deals with it, and so forth so it is just a matter of time before the programmers who make the bot programs just add the needed already available code to their programs and boom the bots are back.

Comment by kbsoftware — August 29, 2007 #
You’ve made a good start. Unfortunately the new procedures kill all 3rd party clients which locks out all non windows users. I hope you can find the time to add chat room support to the other messenger ports, especially Mac

Comment by Bob — August 29, 2007 #
The CAPTCHA is alright, have to get used to putting the code but some bots still get in, Are you going to get the fight rooms back up with this new system of yours. When are you going to open up more rooms in the Games, Yahoo Fighter rooms, because 2 rooms are not enough. You need to make more rooms.

Comment by Kari — August 29, 2007 #
well venom you tell adam not to be writing any room fillers. his failing business is not our problem

Comment by ok — August 29, 2007 #
Venom — thought you did…

Comment by Charged — August 29, 2007 #
rooms are automatically created when previous is full. so saying “2 isn’t enough” is just silly. when room 2 fills 3 will open and so on. get used to that it always worked that way. also get used to their not beeing 300+ rooms in one category. without bots that many rooms won’t fill so get used to being a reg in a lower room.

Comment by mysticalos — August 29, 2007 #
Yahoo has finally done something right! Shocking!! I was in a room earlier and dont even think I saw a bot. I hate to say this, but how long before the bots show up and the rooms are crowded again?

Comment by Alex — August 29, 2007 #
verifying each time is getting really annoying. yahoo just made chat worse, smart move

Comment by verifyingeachtimeisannoying — August 29, 2007 #
Sarah,

Thank you and the staff for seriously addressing the problem and taking measurable action. While I hate having to use the captcha I realize it is a necessary measure to minimize or eliminate bots. I’m sure there are still kinks to be worked out but on the whole there has been a dramatic improvement in chat. I think you have silenced most of the skeptics. Your efforts are greatly appreciated by this yahoo chat user.

Comment by jabadoobie — August 29, 2007 #
Sarah,

While it is a good and appreciated solution to a problem that has been waiting to be solved for well over 5 years now.

It has been less then 24 hours since the implementation of the “Captcha” verification strategy and bots are steadily increasing with frequency. I reckon it will be only a matter of a few days 4-5 days before the issue becomes near epidemic again.

I do hope that you and your team continue to investigate added measures to implement and keep up with this ever evolving plague of technological abuse upon your chatting infrastructure.

Thanks,

Alan
Network Specialist

Comment by alan — August 29, 2007 #
rest assured the bot guys are working hard to develop an automated way to beat the captchas- and once a solution is perfected the bots will be back. So lets hope yahoo continuously improves their captcha algorithms and does not let the chatrooms go to seed like last time..

Comment by ByteKnight — August 29, 2007 #
With this we can celebrate the definitive Death of Italian rooms (the last one that remained)

R.I.P.

Comment by ItalyBoy — August 29, 2007 #
Even tho im verifying my id, i still dont get put into any rooms, and when i try to i get asked to verify all over again and still not get anywhere.

Comment by bluebell — August 29, 2007 #
I really like how things have changed and what not. I do have a request…which I hope is not asking for too much. I only frequent the Games section, and there are only five rooms per sub group. Is it possible to add an extra room or two, or is that too much?

Comment by Dan — August 29, 2007 #
i am so happy that yahoo got rid of all of the booters it works great

Comment by e.p — August 29, 2007 #
Yes yes yes yes yes it works!!!! Hands the Yahoo team a bottle of Champane…..enjoy you deserve it

Comment by kssnuggle — August 29, 2007 #
Why don’t you let us create user rooms using the set of categories you already got?

Seems like a happy medium compared to the user rooms you used to have and the lock down on rooms you currently have.

This is how it’d work. You got a list of categories and sub-categories such as Games, Regional, Religion, Romance, Groups, Countries and Culture, Canada, etc. If I took those, I could mix and match categories to open a new user specified room.

Examples:
Games -> Romance
Romance -> Canada -> Friends -> Games
Friends -> Religion -> USA

At least we could specify our own rooms again if you did that.

Comment by Elbo — August 29, 2007 #
I just visited two trivia rooms that are full of bots. It looks like there is already some capsha defeating code being used. Oh well…

Comment by DavidN — August 29, 2007 #
When are you going to release a decent YM client for Linux? One at least as good as the Mac version

Comment by AGT — August 29, 2007 #
DavidN wrote I just visited two trivia rooms that are full of bots. It looks like there is already some capsha defeating code being used. Oh well

yea thats just someone using a program called room destroy. yahoo go ahead and patch that silly program. anyway, room destroy will not be as wide spread is what we have just dealt with.

Comment by hi — August 29, 2007 #
nice, to see the new updates.

hey sarah, is there a feedback site for yahoo messenger? i much rather post something directly to the yahoo messenger group, rahter in the blog, where i could get critzied for my ideas and then my idea get burried in all the comments.

Comment by Chris — August 29, 2007 #
the capsha thing is very cool i must say
but it’s very annoying to verify every time i join a new room
and i also know that i must do this or the bot’s commander will write the code once and allow the bot to play all day long in the room
but i have an idea, it’s not mine
back when MSN chat was around there was a way to block users who use scripts from joining the user-made rooms
maybe this was possible coz MSN chat was based on IRC and there was a way that u can identfy the IRC client that the script uses so it can be blocked
i don’t know if yahoo could use some technique like that,like blocking all the users that don’t use the yahoo messenger to join the chat, by doing so we can block both bots and booters
what other think of this method

Comment by BigRadi0Head — August 29, 2007 #
Thanks for the timely improvements to Yahoo! Chat. You all have shown that you are concerned about it and thankyou very much for that. God Bless You and i’m glad the bots are out!

Comment by Jeff — August 29, 2007 #
good job.
Yahoo! gets a cookie.

Comment by fat-head — August 29, 2007 #
In my humble opinion,If yahoo! has created a way to eliminate 99% or so of the bots everyone said was their first concearn in chat and was making it unworthy of loging into,I say hats off to them.

Comment by zx — August 29, 2007 #
I DO NOT LIKE THE FACT WE GET DISCONNECTED!!! PLEASE FIX THIS NUISANCE!

Comment by Blah — August 29, 2007 #
Good job getting rid of the bots for now. I sometimes get a message that the image is unavailable at this time, please try again later.

Comment by Zeus — August 29, 2007 #
I think the disconnections every 45 to 90 minutes is a good deterrent to keep any bots that do get into the room, out.

Comment by Venom — August 29, 2007 #
This is all fine and good, but Yahoo has effectively kicked millions of linux users from chat.

Yahoos own chat client for Unix is about 8th gral level lab class work with no voice or cam support so yo can not use it. The one Linux program that used to work now gets error 999 when clicking on the verification link.

If this is thebest work Yahoo can do as a corporation they are screwed.

Comment by Dom Billings — August 29, 2007 #
You people give it a REST already!!! so what if you have to verify each time!! like you have anything better to do , dam!!! Thanks Sarah and Yahoo staff , its sooo much better

Comment by candy — August 29, 2007 #
Thank god,,, this is a good idea to verify the humans to bots,,,I would rather do it this way,,,acct. verification than to put up with the bots.

Comment by Ladysportster06 — August 29, 2007 #
hmmm…..the new log in is not fool proof. The room I’m there there were no bots for a few hours. Now that it’s later, here come the bots. It’s not fool proof. Give thime two weeks and all the bots will be back!

Comment by dhrflfo — August 29, 2007 #
I just serioiusly looked at the verification screen, there is no audio prompt to help the visually impaired, and this CAN (and should) be done, press a button, hear a media file read the letters to the impaired, it still wont help a bot sign in, but a visually impaired person would. Yes, this is a special interest group request, but, its the right thing to do.

Comment by Julie — August 29, 2007 #
don’t be too paranoid guys of course u will see some bots coz the bot owner can always do a manual login lolz bots are still controlled by human in case u u forgot!!!! but the fact is that its harder for them to log their bots coz they have to do it manually…as far as i’m concern their are fewer boots right now so thats it…

Comment by oh well — August 29, 2007 #
well still cant get ytunnel to work in new login system

Comment by unhappy — August 29, 2007 #
Y!Tunnel does work with the new login system, as does YTK Pro.

Comment by Venom — August 29, 2007 #
A automated bot program got in windows:1 10 came in at the same time and i know the person doing it she need to be banded. She needs to be stoped they broke captcha i think this is against the law.

Comment by Rob Madden — August 29, 2007 #
room buster keeps saying rooms are full but when i drop ytunnel i get in with no problem???

Comment by unhappy — August 29, 2007 #
Disable the room buster. Better yet, go to the Y!Tunnel forums and post about your problem there (I believe it may be a slight incompatibility with the captcha, I don’t have that problem with YTK). Hummm. I may test this later. =)

Comment by Venom — August 29, 2007 #
the link does NOT open a new window. it does NOTHING, and no where on the web is there any help to get over this problem.

any ideas on what to do?

Comment by lovesixfingers — August 29, 2007 #
what ADAM has said is very accurate voice bots can still do their nasty stuff in yahoo chat!!! their abuse of yahoo voice continue if only yahoo can do something about this they must not allow voice login until the user do the captcha im not sure if at present yahoo system its hard to implement but i hope yahoo will do it.

if it is not much to ask for yahoo team please take a look at this problem and deal with these morons….

i think the site of the person doing this progran is http://www.asrprogs.com take a look at this yahoo

thanks.

Comment by oh well — August 29, 2007 #
I did everything and when I get into a room theres no one there but me. The room does not open what do I do know? HELP!

Comment by Doc — August 29, 2007 #
lovesixfingers, make sure whatever browser you use is set as the default browser.

Comment by Venom — August 29, 2007 #
Thanks Yahoo for making Chat possible for us decent folks. I’m happy to see my favorite rooms full of real people instead of those pesky porn bots. Keep up the good work. If at all possible, can you give me some info as to when the voice feature on Chat will be available for Windows Vista ?

Comment by Jose — August 29, 2007 #
what the hell does not anyone care that captcha was hacked with damn bots. read my last posting

Comment by Rob Madden — August 29, 2007 #
the given link does not opens the window and this does not works

Comment by sagar — August 29, 2007 #
people who are complining must be bots them selfs

Comment by Chris — August 29, 2007 #
I still can’t get into rooms, I have the older yahoo 6.0 I never did an upgrade because everything was fine until now. I get user refused join notice on most of the rooms and the rooms I can get in are empty. after I do captcha to get in the room nothing happens. I also tryed yahelite to get in I get a error message. I guess its chat detox for me. anyone else getting this problem?

Comment by Doc — August 29, 2007 #
i know if your account is regestererd under the age 18 or younger (that being, 1990 or later) you wont be able to log in since they made yahoo chat for people 18 and up

Comment by Chris — August 29, 2007 #
Hi, while i do feel this will benifit the community you fail to realize that blind users are now totally barred from the chat experience

Comment by tj — August 29, 2007 #
hey please we wanna get rid of the continously verifying part while switchin rooms pleaseeee i think ill be brain dead soon do sumthin about it

i think i luv bots now

Comment by guttsy — August 30, 2007 #
bring back the bots just nomore verifications pleaseeeeeeeee omg why are u playing with us its not funny anymore Yahoo u need to ok fine u can come down here n kill me with ur bare digital hands……….

Comment by guttsy — August 30, 2007 #
[...] Yahoo! Messenger Chat is bot-free (for now) with the addition of capcha confirmation before joining rooms. It’s a bit bothersome on changing rooms because there is a captcha whenever you enter a [...]

Pingback by ONAT LOPERA » Bot-Free Yahoo! Messenger Chat — August 30, 2007 #
Venom why do you feel the need to post your ytk link on EVERY POST you are as bad as the bots yahoo works = no ytk pro GOOD don’t spam this blog we have had enough of it as it is good god

Comment by Geez — August 30, 2007 #
i wanna say only one thing that u have made room joining very difficult so plz find other way to reduce bots
to verify every time is so dificult

Comment by DAMAN — August 30, 2007 #
yahoo team please stop allowing voice login b4 captcha verification becoz it is being exploited by voice bot……….pleaseeeee yahoo team thats the only flaw left right now please stop them.

thanks

Comment by hey its me — August 30, 2007 #
cool

Comment by name — August 30, 2007 #
pretty sad thats all they have to do at ymlite and ytk bunch of losers

Comment by more reasons to stay away from ymlite and ytk pro — August 30, 2007 #
0.12456

Comment by name — August 30, 2007 #
Grrrrrrrr…the bots are trickling back in.

LOVEPROFUSIONwno373 , who’s profile links to webcam-lounge.com

And when did CAPs begin appearing in IDs (not nicknames,) on the list and why did we need that “enhancement”?

Comment by mourn4chat — August 30, 2007 #
Hey,

When will voice be part of yahoo messenger for mac.
I need that to be able to use Yahoo Phone Out.
I like the Yahoo phone out, but I think one can only wait so long before moving to other services.

Thanks,
Imran

Comment by Imran Ahmed — August 30, 2007 #
for years booter’s have been unable to bypass the code when making a bot. in other words they make the bots one by one, all the bot maker does is fill in all the information in advance to make it a little faster. well same thing with the new room filler thing. each bot has no choice but to enter that code before it logs in. that means if a person wants to put 40 bots in a room he must enter 40 seperate codes. see what im getting at?? that takes to much time and buy the time they get all 40 bots in the room yahoo will have more than likely disconnected them. if you see someone trying this time consuming process in your room inform room admin and yahoo will clear them. so no need to worry friends we are safe.

Comment by happy user — August 30, 2007 #
Congradulations yahoo team!!!The room verification is a great idea!Although it did not stop a voice booter and a couple room booters it still great!The ones who don’t like it are either too lazy to type in the code ,or the bot makers themselves.I had absolutly no problem in the chat rooms last night except for the one voice lagger that locked up the room.I guess some people live their lives to make others miserable instead of putting their energy toward making something of their self.Some don’t realize the older messengers do not work with the new chat,some have still got windows 98 which also doesnt work that well,and some dont realize that you can get disconnected by other things besides yahoo.Anyway thank you for your hard work and the new improvements!!!

Comment by BJ — August 30, 2007 #
To those complaining about having to enter a code every time they change rooms…SO WHAT? You complain about Yahoo not doing anything about the bots and now that they have you’re complaining about that??!!! Granted it took them too long to finally address the issue, but now that its done be at least a little grateful that they did something. Just hope they can keep ahead of the scum sucking bot makers.
From my perspective I say, “Congrats and thank you to Yahoo for finally doing something that appears to be working…at least for now.”

Comment by Gary — August 30, 2007 #
no body is complaining so what are you talking about?

Comment by huh — August 30, 2007 #
Julie, It is interresting that you made the comment about the visually impared.I was thinking the same thing yesterday.It surely is an idea that probably slipped by Yahoo! My thinking was more along the lines of dyslexic users.Ill bet there are a few that went cross-eyed over that one. Thanks for the thinking of the often neglected users of yahoo! chat. These are the ones that Chat has a huge impact on primarily because of their disabilities.

Comment by zx — August 30, 2007 #
nice try zx. the security word is large and bold. if a person cant see that they shouldn’t use a computer.stop looking for exploits.

Comment by oh well — August 30, 2007 #
oh well, you’re a callous moron. The security word isn’t that big and no matter how big, some people would still need audio output.

By your reasoning, someone paralyzed who can’t type shouldn’t use a computer either. Tell that to Stephen Hawking.

Comment by mourn4chat — August 30, 2007 #
just don’t use yahoo chat then ok. problem solved

Comment by yoo — August 30, 2007 #
whenever you enter a secure site (i.e banking account, pharmacy sites list goes on and on) you must enter a security word. this is nothing new folks so stop trying to manipulate yahoo into making it easier for you to fill rooms faster sickos”” .

Comment by use your head — August 30, 2007 #
Doesn’t matter anyway. Adam over at ytk pro will do everything in his power to screw up yahoo to keep his FRAUDULENT site up and running. I guess he is to afraid of getting a real job.

Comment by short lived — August 30, 2007 #
There isnt really a problem with voice bots…Its fairly simple to ignore the botmaster hogging the mike & continue talking….chat works with the consensus of the room…if people want to iggy the person with the voice bots they can continue to talk normally.
Using CAPTCHA has stopped room fillers & thats far more important than stopping voice bots.

Comment by Timothy — August 30, 2007 #
well if there where bots in that room they are gone now. all that work for nothing roger

Comment by yawn — August 30, 2007 #
you want to do something, remove the hands free option from voice, period, it is annoying and allows rude people to completely dominate voice chat. force them to push a button instead of being lazy since we CANT choose our rooms as we once could, which is a major annoyance for most users who have built small communities in specific rooms…

Comment by gapdragon — August 30, 2007 #
people quit bitching, iof you hack your way though yahoo chat, yahoo will find you and WILL arest you. hell, the FBI may arivie at your door in less then 5 minuntes to arest you for hacking yahoo’s server.

you people who are complining are bots your self and are real idiots and its sad that you dont have a life…

james kane lol

Comment by Chris — August 30, 2007 #
yah u can ignore those who use mass iggy but the point is if yahoo is addressing bot issue i think voice bots should be included, if it is not very hard for them to do.

i want to see this exploit defeated by yahoo so that once and for all all these people will know that yahoo is in control. Besides this bots are consuming yahoo resources coz b4 i once saw 1000 voice bots in a room

so yahoo team again, if its not that hard for u guys… stop this voice bots from getting voice b4 the captcha or stop socks proxy in joining voice chat

thanks for the wonderful update. “Yahoo Rules”

Comment by john — August 30, 2007 #
About the complainers complaining about the CAPTCHA being hard to see.

Umm. If you can’t see the letters in the CAPTCHA which uses a rather large font (about 20pt), then how the heck do you use the rest of chat? Such as selecting rooms, selecting which profile to use, reading chat in the room, viewing the userlist, finding the TALK button, etc. Oh, and how the heck did you use this blog forum? The fonts here are much smaller.

If you can’t see the CAPTCHA, then you can’t see anything else on Messenger. You guys sound like trolls. I think you’re full of it.

Comment by Elbo — August 30, 2007 #
It seems that many people can not see all the text in rooms unless they un-check the “ignore anyone who is not on my messenger list” option.
While this may not be a big deal in some rooms, in others it is a total menace.
It seems that many of the gentlemen (and I use that term loosely) who live in Pervert-istan miss the porn bots terribly. As a result people are being relentlessly PMd with sexual requests, inuendos and assorted “want to see my penis” invites.
Granted we can click the ignore button- but every time these idiots PM, it interrupts what ever you are typing in the main room.
And yes, before all you really cool people and suck ups tell me to get a life off yahoo- let me assure you I do have one, but I do enjoy catching up with my internet friends occasionally.
Without constructive criticism and feedback from yahoo users the “project managers” will not be aware of problems with the program.

Comment by anneticipationnnnn — August 30, 2007 #
thanks sarah we have our rooms back…but dont fall asleep and loose every thing you worked for

Comment by den — August 30, 2007 #
My ignore anyone who is not on my messenger list is unchecked and I follow all the steps. The list of people in the chat room does’nt show up and it shows only me and captcha on the list. I get im’s though and cam invites. I have not had any text in any of the rooms for over a week now. Its getting very frustrating. Thank gosh I still have at least another month of warm weather to drive my 1969 Impala cause this sure sucks.

Comment by piece — August 30, 2007 #
to Oh Well In spite of you arrogant and I might add unenlightened point of view,the world doesn’t center around you.This may be a shock to your ego, but everyone needs a heads-up now and again even if it falls on blind eyes .(pun intended)..you can find me in 40,s romance rooms if you would like to discuss this like a gentleman.

Comment by zx — August 30, 2007 #
i can see text just fine with seeting s set to friends only. hope these posts se not from adam trying to get people to buy his trash companion. lets face it. there are no bots to filter, no spam, and booters are far and few between. just keep those settings pm’s from friends only and you wont get booted. adam go bug msn or aol or something just leave us alone with all your booters and inti boot programs. just bug off.

Comment by what — August 30, 2007 #
Well done, Yahoo. Thanks!

Comment by Ryan B — August 30, 2007 #
OH MY GOSH. I tryed and thought I was going into romance 50’s room 1 even though I have no text and IMAGINE after I get an IM to be told you do know your in a self pleasure room. I’m a lady. Is yahoo trying to make a bot out of me? lol. See now if after I enter the STUPID CAPTCHA CODE IT WOULD PUT ME IN THE DAMN ROOM I would have known that but NOOOO. ARGGG MATEYS Lets all have a mutiny and abandon the ship. Oh I forgot, its free.

Comment by piece — August 30, 2007 #
check out craig over at ymlite forum giving step by step instructions on how to bypass captcha. btw it’s a long process that is pointless really. notice the guy who sticks up for yahoo in the forum is labled idiot user lol

Comment by what — August 30, 2007 #
Never heard of a Screen Reader, huh?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_reader

Turns text on the screen into voice output, for the blind and visually impaired, but surely can’t read and translate the distorted characters of the verification code.

But you’re right, Sherlock: anyone dissatisfied and left out by captcha MUST be a booter, p0rn advertiser, or troll.

Comment by mourn4chat — August 30, 2007 #
Great job, sarah and team!

As far as visually impared users, since you can do voice chat without doing the captcha, there is a way.

I am sure yahoo will have a voice alternative captcha eventually, since screen reader and braille converters are not able to access.

Comment by disco-legend-zeke — August 30, 2007 #
Not entirely true moum4chat, I use Mac OS, Linux, and Beos and I am left out. I have no ill intentions but would like to be able to chat with friends from around the world the same as Windows users. With the lack of support from Yahoo! thus far, 3rd party chat clients were our most viable options.

http://www.geocities.com/bad_bad_sloar

Comment by Sloar — August 30, 2007 #
Ok Yahoo … Can you please open the fight rooms back up so the people that visit them can go back to them. We use to never have the problem of them invading our other rooms until i was informed last night that the rooms are still closed and looks to remain that way. I don’t see a problem if they are open … at least that would keep them out of our rooms. Some of us like to visit romance rooms, someof us like political rooms…well this bunch of people made it very clear that they like the fight rooms. I would just like to see everyone happy and would like to see them out of the rooms that i and many others enjoy. so please yahoo for the sake of others give them their fight rooms back so we can have our rooms. Thank You !!!!

Comment by Rhonda — August 30, 2007 #
I concur a VAST improvement in the chat rooms.

I wonder how long the Bot programmers will take to circumvent CAPTCHA? The Bots that seem to be getting through must have been logged in by a real person, then left to thier own device. The others may or may not be Yahoo inspired , but at least they are benign compared to the Porn bots!

Thank you for some respite Yahoo team. It’s a postive step. Lets hope that all the hackers and spammers you have just thrown down the gauntlet to take a LOOONG time to find a crack to wriggle back in through

I had one problem today… I was talk in alaska regional chatroom #1 when someone launched a denial of service attack on me. I had made a comment in the room that I was gald the hackers have been thwarted…. and some fool says oh yeah you really thing so? Suddenly I was bombarded by a propigating bot series . Must have had 100 windows pop up in 20 seconds. I had to disconnect my cable modem to stop it.

After I logged back in the same guy tried it again. but I was too fast and iggied him…. still a scary thought. This guy bragged that in less than 48 hours he would have the “crack ” in hand and the bots and spamming would start again…. I wish I’d have remembered his ID…. hmmmm

Comment by ANONYmoose — August 30, 2007 #
Thanks for the heads up!

Comment by The Dog Clothing Company — August 30, 2007 #
just so you folks know

1: pm bomb booters still work so dont complain yahoo has not worked on them yet.
2: yes you can fill a room but you have to enter security code for each bot you join which is time consuming. plus yahoo will d/c them within one hour.
3:enjoy chat.

4: dont use y!mlite or ytk until you research them first. most of us already know the story on them though so i wont go into detail. have a good day in chat folks.

Comment by get it yet — August 30, 2007 #
Good progress. It’s nice to have no bots but I know a lot of people who would’ve preferred other improvements first (the tiny text limit is irritating, for example, and it’s unclear whether profile pictures will change to accommodate Yahoo Photos closing, or just go away entirely, which is bad). Are those in the works at all?

Comment by Jamie — August 30, 2007 #
how does this help yahoo chat craig (author ymlite) anyway that method would take ages to complete and by the time u finish your bots will be disconnected.

Comment by im a believer — August 30, 2007 #
Well looks like some one cracked the code, a local idiot in our local room has now worked out a way to bring his bots in, flooding the room AGAIN !!!!! im verry upset with yahoo

Comment by markj — August 30, 2007 #
yeah thanks for the fix even though it worked for a couple of hours only the effort is appreciated..the same guy who has been flooding all the trivia rooms didn’t take a day even before he has figured out a way to bypass this little system and continue flooding the rooms like he usually does. I realize it’s the internet and a lot of people are going to be booting, trying to bypass security features, and stealing accounts. This has been going on since I have been using yahoo(going on 5 years now). I think it would be good for yahoo to somehow lock out the ip addresses or even take away these guys accounts who make all the bots after all isn’t the issue here? the bots?

Comment by someonewithanopinion — August 30, 2007 #
uh…that was my point, bad_bad_sloar: not everyone who’s dissatisfied is a booter, spammer, or troll with ill intentions. you missed the sarcasm.

Comment by mourn4chat — August 30, 2007 #
You know, I heard from someone that Yahoo employs 12,000 people, but only 5 are dedicated to Yahoo! Chat.

I bet those 5 are junior developers straight out of college… given the sloppiness of their implementation.

Comment by bots-b-gone — August 30, 2007 #
Chat works great now, now quit changing stuff before you break it again.

Comment by Banger — August 30, 2007 #
Moderator: I know u deleted my post and a few others. Heh. I only hope you pass it along to the developers so they can fix that CAPTCHA. It’s a VERY simple fix.

On every CAPTCHA submit do:

$_SESSION['captcha'] = null;

Otherwise, you’re just an ostrich with your head in the sand. You really think no one knows about it?

Comment by bots-b-gone — August 30, 2007 #
Finally, voice works under MS Vista, since release 416 of Messenger. Note a small inconvenience for some that at least under Vista, the new room entry procedure does not work with the Firefox browser; I needed to open Internet Explorer and paste the web link to Captcha into it.

Comment by Gary K — August 30, 2007 #
I have been useing the older yahoo for a long time, when i try to get into a room I use the catcha then it tells me to go chat but the room don’t open , and I some rooms I get error message or user rufesed chat. I am 58 years old so it can”t be my age. do I have to upgrade now.

Comment by montie — August 30, 2007 #
Thanks Sarah & the Yahoo team. Unlike a lot of lazy whingers, I have no probs with typing a couple more keystrokes when entering chat rooms. It’s great to be able to chat properly again.
It also seems to me that it is the 3rd party users who have been having the most trouble, whereas those of us who stay with Yahoo have for months now wondered why anyone would bother with the other servers at all.
Q: Is it true that Yahoo has now the ONLY rooms where free speech is NOT moderated? If so, hang in there guys n gals. Some of us appreciate you.
Again, thank-you.

Comment by cheek_peas — August 30, 2007 #
I get the empty message box but there is no message with a link for me to click on. It just sits there. any fixes?

Comment by Michael — August 30, 2007 #
Well congratulations yahoo chat team, job well done !!!!!!

Comment by mark — August 30, 2007 #
yes… congratulation, good job sarah and your team, chat room now clean, no more spam bots, porn bots, this is nice and cool…. very happy with that.. but the problems and make me confused when we want changes to the other room why must verification agains, but that’s ok sarah
i appreciate you and you’re team….
viva yahoo chat room

Comment by serdadunakal — August 30, 2007 #
Bots are back in fine spamming form in UK:1, and Australia:3 & 7 at the moment. So what happens next if the bots screw chat up *again*?

Comment by Rob Madden — August 30, 2007 #
Jolly good show, old chaps, and chappettes! Pip, Pip and all that rot, eh, what? Wouldn’t want some nasty bot with homicidal tendencies such as that old HAL 9000 unit that tried to do that fine David Bowman fellow in, trying to get up to some sort of mischief. Perhaps by having its way with our virtual selves, would we now? All kidding aside, thanks for all the hard work, Sarah and team! Dadz

Comment by Dadzbluz — August 30, 2007 #
WELL DIDNT TAKE LONG FR THE BOTS TO GET BACK IN,(UK ROOM 19) FULL OF THEM.SO MUCH FR YAHELL HAVING A WONDERFULL SYSTEM OF VERIVICATION.
GET YR FINGER OUT YAHOO, U COULD NOT ORGANIZE A PISS UP IN A BREWERY.

Comment by andy — August 30, 2007 #
i can’t believe that stupid idiots are allowed to join this blog!!!….they saw one room with plenty of bots and the say yahoo sytem is hacked! how stupid can u get? r u on drugs or something?

of course u can still see bots coz bots can still join manually! who knows the bot owner decided to join his bots manually in that room? get the point? but unlike b4 bots are very rampant in every yahoo rooms right now the number of bots in yhaoo rooms is dramatically reduced! try to visit rooms 1-10 and im sure ul have 8 rooms with plenty of space lolz.

So b4 u post ur comments in this blog be sure ur taking ur medication ok? STUPID

Comment by james — August 30, 2007 #
^ Good one lol

Comment by Rob Madden — August 30, 2007 #
lol i only seen 2 bots in that room and both where booted.

Comment by lol — August 30, 2007 #
Bots are flooding the rooms? Where? Since Yahoo implemented captcha I may have seen only 5 bots total and they were pretty easy to put on ignore. The bots that do make it into the room have to do it manually…an automated program won’t let you flood the rooms like the bots where able to before. Maybe some rooms might have a lot of bots in them but they are probably not from the same person anymore. Chat has been nice with hardly any bots in the room.

Comment by John — August 30, 2007 #
Hmm…I would have no problem constantly entering the captcha stuff IF it actually put me into a room. Once I do the verification..NOTHING happens. It just sits there. Doesn’t matter what room I click on..zilch. Nada. Kaput! lol. My perferences are NOT set to block people on my list because i’ve had it set for ytun pref. I’ve tried it with ytun on and with ytun off. Same deal. Nothing happens after i’ve been verified.

Comment by Jay — August 30, 2007 #
ok bots are almost away, that’s a good thing buth how about the damn booters????
when you gonna do something about that???
i hope it will not take long for you gonna do something about it

Comment by eddy — August 30, 2007 #
dont worry about the booters

Comment by nemented — August 31, 2007 #
now the only problem is the idiots that have thier supposed regular rooms trying to control those of us that have been misplaced by your upgrade..alot of good chatters have left and wont come back…I have been in your chat program since yahoo came out..I have seen it go from a super program to a booter haven..even with the upgrade there are still booters and I for one would like to know what will you at yahoo intend to do about the booters online

Comment by Patti — August 31, 2007 #
Haaaaaaaa, that work good for about 2 days

Comment by elecman22003 — August 31, 2007 #
looks like we traded the smileys for the bots being gone…sounds like a fair trade i guesswas just wondering if there was a reason the smiley codes dont work in chat no more

Comment by dont wanna say — August 31, 2007 #
There are a lot fewer bots except for the ones entered manually I suppose. There are techniques for defeating character recognition captcha in the literature. How about moving to question captchas if bots start to defeat character ones? Political rooms could ask political questions, trivia rooms could ask general trivia, science rooms about science or math, regional rooms region specific trivia, etc.
I don’t mind entering captchas. The rooms are more like they were in the 90s now. It is very nice not to see rooms completely filled up by bots. Thank you Yahoo team.

Comment by DavidN — August 31, 2007 #
Thank you so much, Yahoo! Chat is finally an enjoyable experience again. Many people were driven away by the inability to enter rooms due to the flood of bots. Hopefully, when they see the magnificent job you’ve done eliminating the bot problem, they will come back. Now if you would only address the antiquated Television rooms list… We want our Big Brother room back!

Comment by Wayne Harke — August 31, 2007 #
well all this anti bot measures are good but two things of importance one the process of verification everytime u enter a chat toom is not only tedious but very very frustrating as it takes precious time we go to chat rooms for fun enjoyment and serious business as the case may be now if we have to verify everytime it becomes really very frustrating especially when simple solutions can be found out of this tardy process too like for example the verification process must be limited to a group of rooms only like say romance now instead of verifying everytime for 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s moonlight asian connections interacial gay lesbian disco inferno etc it would be better if the verification process is done only fro the romance group of rooms as a whole and secondly despite all these commendable measures some bots are still slipping through so the process is not yet fool proof and kindly address this verification process issue quickly its very frustrating and time consuming and irritating i hope all these issues are resolved quickly
regards

Comment by kiran — August 31, 2007 #
@ Geez, because the link is the homepage you put in when you make comments (optional of course). What about those who post here with other client/companion links in their name, eh?

@ get it yet, you obviously judge YTK as something “bad” since it seems you don’t like Y!mLite. Don’t judge one because you don’t like the other, as it speaks for itself. Craig is a friend of the developers, and that’s it. Judging unfairly because of Y!mLite, that’s not very nice.

Other than that, chats are working nicely, but, there are still small problems with the servers. Sarah, they are going to be addressed, right?

Comment by Venom — August 31, 2007 #
hey there is a new problem here, the rooms result to be full when there are only 20 nicknames… anyone has this problem?

Comment by ItalyBoy — August 31, 2007 #
AND, the room list is not properly refreshed… many rooms are told to be filled with 50… and they are almoust empty instead…

Comment by ItalyBoy — August 31, 2007 #
Could you PLEASE PLEASE explain to me why you changed the ignore feature on version 8? You have left MANy of us open to booters.

On messenger 7 when you change the ignore everyone not on my list, you are protected from pm boots. But on messenger 8 when you do that you are yes, protected from booters, but you can not see any of the people not on your list typing in a chatroom. PLEASE put it back to the way 7 was. i like a lot of the features from 8 and WANT to use it, but I can not because i get booted at least 5 times a day and it’s so bad for my computer. Thank you.

Comment by stacey — August 31, 2007 #
People still complaining. I’m not having any problem, which is surprising, considering past performance, and the fact I’m using a recent, but not the latest YM and the free “Basic” YTunnel.

Have the roughly hourly disconnects ceased? If so, I’ll gladly put up with having to verify for every room change.

Comment by mourn4chat_no_more — August 31, 2007 #
Sarah, I’m having trouble with when I’m in a room and someone new comes in they have no ears to me till I refresh mine is this going to be tweek ??

I like the new way to go into a room, (here is my but)
I’m in a rm that is in the higher numbers so with the rooms opening slowly and one at a time it seems like its gonna be forever to get back in there.

Comment by Julianna — August 31, 2007 #
great to see a decent approach and attempt to deal with the bot issue sad to see there are still so many whiners that cant get over a tiny inconvience which is worse 5000 bots or taking 30 secs extra to get in chat some people need to grow up and stop complaining of course thatll never happen

Comment by Magoo — August 31, 2007 #
kudos, sarah, on a job well done with the rooms open again & the bot captcha….a question, though…why are the rooms not all there anymore? the room that i frequented is no longer accessible.

Comment by irate user — August 31, 2007 #
stacey, the issue with not seeing anyone in chats while the “Ignore anyone who is not on your Messenger List” is really a Yahoo! Messenger bug.

Comment by Venom — August 31, 2007 #
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAD IDEA THIS IS INTERNATIONAL CHAT FOR ALL WORLD NOT FOR A SMALL COMPANY OR FAMILLY
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD

Comment by ME — August 31, 2007 #
I am being kept out of the chat rooms. I am filling out the code needed, and I am taken to a page where it says my account has been verified. However, I am not being put into the actual rooms. Only started a couple hours ago. HELP.

Comment by Professor Farnsworth — August 31, 2007 #
close the page that says congratulations and you will see the room behid it — hehe

Comment by Charged — August 31, 2007 #
As the famous saying from the movie “Poltergeist” goes ………”They’re here!!!!!!!!!” and the porn bots are stronger than ever. A real fix would have been nice rather than this band-aid for a bullet wound and is still possible if the people at Yahoo actually try. CAPTCHA is very easily bypassed and was only a temp way to block them in my opinion.

Comment by 6Six6 — August 31, 2007 #
ty for taking sugestions good job

Comment by tony — August 31, 2007 #
Hi Sarah, great work!

I knew we could count on you to fix things. Our hats are off to you and your crew. Not been a single bot in the room. A few claim to have been “voice booted” but who knows, for all I know they may have just been disconnected by other causes.

Anyways, this beer’s for you! Good job!

Comment by Kaziglu_Bey — August 31, 2007 #
Not impressed, myself. I don’t understand why we have to reverify when we move from room to room. No answer on that, yet. Only just in the last little while has the verification actually worked consistently, as well. Earlier today I wasn’t getting through more than half of the time.

As far as the bots? Well, yeah.. the rooms were chock full of bots the last week or so. But compared to 3 months ago, there isn’t much difference it seems; still a fair number of bots with spam messages or conversation invites. Unfortunately, our only recourse is to ignore them. (I’d hate to see my iggy list!)

Then there’s the matter with the number of people in a room. Just visited a couple of rooms advertised at 35 to 40 people; there were only 8-12 when I got there. Not THAT many left in 15 seconds!

Done with chat. Not worth the time, trouble, effort.

Comment by Rick — August 31, 2007 #
There’s a serious problem. The user room limit is progressively dropping as time goes by. Right now it’s about 17 users per room, but for the last couple days since the captcha was implemented, the room user limit keeps dropping.

Please make note of this problem, before nobody can get into Yahoo chats at all when it gets stuck on 1.

Comment by Venom — August 31, 2007 #
I have followed the new instructions for getting into chat - typed in the code & received the Congratulations window. I close the window as instructed and still see no user list and no text. People can see me however as I start to receive pm’s…. This has been happening since the new captcha was begun and I can’t seem to figure out why, or how to change it… Any suggestions?

Comment by caity — August 31, 2007 #
Caity-you sound like you have your IM’s closed to those not on your friends list and you are running a version higher than 7.5 — you might try opening your IMs in preferences - ignore - set it to only ignore the list below –

Comment by Charged — August 31, 2007 #
Captcha for YM not work in LINUX.
With Gyachi, captcha does not appear, link can not be clicked.
With Pidgin/Gaim, just silence …

Can you fix this A.S.A.P?
tx

Comment by Sam — August 31, 2007 #
too hard to chat

Comment by teresa — August 31, 2007 #
are you guys seriously complaining? join any room there are like 0.05% as many bots as there used to be.

100% bot elimination is never going to happen (as long as there are chat rooms to join) but yahoo did their best to implement methods to screw up the ease of automation for botters & it friggin works.

its a way of life with chat, just like your “bulk mail” folder in email.

for gods sake this is a free service and all you people do is complain, if you don’t like yahoo chat there are other alternatives that you can pay for… quit demanding things, be happy with what they’ve done so far & be patient… maybe they’ll figure out how to smooth out the process based on CONSTRUCTIVE feedback

Comment by jason — August 31, 2007 #
So, the bots are starting to defeat the captcha. What’s the next step? Is reporting someone as spam going to start doing something?

Comment by robert — August 31, 2007 #
Hello Yahoo Plz Fix the user Rooms id stuck in rooms and plus some of the rooms only 10 user lol, plz update all the rooms to 50 users Max fix them Thanx

Comment by Prince — September 1, 2007 #
Sarah & Team - Bravo!

The rest of you ungrateful twits…disappear.

Comment by Paul — September 1, 2007 #
thank u yahoo, its about time, the bots are gone, and the chatroom are back.

Comment by richel619 — September 1, 2007 #
This a a good first step. but what good does alienating the sight impaired users of your chat services do for you? If you can’t read what the captcha code, then you are out of luck?

Comment by TMDK421 — September 1, 2007 #
fgyfgyfgf

Comment by shine — September 1, 2007 #
I choose a room to go into and click the tlink, but Captcha does not appear, any advice on this.

Comment by goldsworthypaul — September 1, 2007 #
well that doesn’t work. some rooms still have bots in them… kinda bums me out. i think yahoo should wipe out the in-messenger chat and get up the web server chats back up. the only way a bot would get in there is if the server itself has the bots, not messengers. i hope that’s one of the updates with the new messenger

Comment by Homer — September 1, 2007 #
I use to be a yahoo chat user but when all the problems started I got rid of everything to do with yahoo messenger and started using Talk City, the rooms there don’t have voice but it is a nice place to chat and it is Java based so no bots at all since the rooms are moderated.

Comment by Sandy — September 1, 2007 #
Since yesterday, Aug. 31, @ around noontime PST, I have been unable to get into the chat rooms to chat. The room comes up and the link for the Captcha which i am able to do but then when it says that my account has been validated and i can go chat, the chat room looks the same as before i did the validation. I reinstalled messenger thinking maybe that would help but i am still unable to get in. Any news/information about what may be happening would be appreciated. Thanks…

Comment by JenD — September 1, 2007 #
Are all of you who are saying “if you don’t like it you can leave” so arrogant as to really believe that will happen? Yahoo is a public place. What you are doing is the same as saying if you don’t like the door to the store, don’t shop there. Insanity! What you do not recognise is that the door is locked for some, but not others. That is why what Yahoo has done makes no sense, and Yahoo thinks this is how to run a business?

WAKE UP YAHOO AND STOP LOCKING OUT YOUR CUSTOMERS WHO ARE REAL PEOPLE - FOR EXAMPLE THE BLIND!

Comment by Cathie — September 1, 2007 #
It seems to me if you don’t have to verify between rooms then the Bot masters can put bots into a room manually by entering the visual code and let them start propagating to other rooms automatically. With the check between rooms there is a barrier to this.

Comment by Chazz — September 1, 2007 #
every time I try to verify my account there is no code in the box…does any one know how to hepl me…God Bless Thank You Judy

Comment by Judy — September 1, 2007 #
Sarah
What is the reason behind switching the photo accounts over to other groups. I find this very inconvient when trying to update my photo’s and also when I am checking other individuals profiles out. Not sure who made this decision but it is only going to encourage more individuals NOT TO FIIL OUT the profile info. Whats the use when ya have to go to a second site to see the photo of the individual.

Three cheers for using a method to control the bots. So far have only had a few problems getting into the room after using the pass letters, and that is because the room is full. by the time ya get the ok from Captcha.

Comment by kssnuggle — September 1, 2007 #
i tried to get in my fab room..i kept trying for 15 mins. when i finally got in..there were only 25 users…i din understand why i was getting ‘room is full’ messages.

Comment by plzexplain — September 1, 2007 #
To Yahoo: Thanks for finally getting us some form of chat back. Now the pigs have landed again and I’ve finished rainbow digging I can at least use some of it again.

To a lot of the people posting here:
Whoa, stop, halt, desist, freeze or be fired on! All the inane, inarticulate, illiterate or even just the plain bloody nit-pickers zip it up for a while.
If you have information to post here, whether to point out bits that still don’t work, possible future problems etc. then for God’s sake make it clear and to the point.
If you just want to tell us what a bad day you’re having, or you hate JoeBlogs4, or to continue a verbal flaming war with someone, or any other piece of inane “filler” take it somewhere else. How the hell do you expect any of the Yahoo people to pick up the good stuff from a sea of dross?

I’m not trying to come over all pro-Yahoo: Check my previous posts: none of them could be described as “Yahoo enamoured” in describing this shambles we’ve all had to wade/wait through, but a lot of the postings on here have been way too similar to the gibberish/personality clashes and plain verbal garbage that have dogged the chatrooms for years.

Yahoo had a major problem here, albeit some of which could have been avoided/managed in a better way and WE HAD NO CHAT! Let’s try and remember that.

The rollout of Captcha has at least returned a lot of functionality to most of us (even if only for the time being) even if the price is the slight inconvenience of having to log in again when changing rooms. I’m a regular room surfer and I can live with it. Those complaining about difficulties reading the actual Captcha text have my sympathies, since I have trouble deciding things like upper/lower case in the “bendy” Captcha characters sometimes too, but be bloody patient.
They’ve patched most of the big hole in the hull for the moment, but there will still be some water getting in ’till they get everything fixed. You may have to wait until they get her to dry dock. This was an emergency and they have at least (slowly, painfully and with some lamentable lack of communication at times) come up with something that has got chat working again for a large number of people. If they don’t sort it for the others within a reasonable time then you’ve got reason to bleat loud and clear, but a little patience first please. Those with special needs have got a bit too used to being able to bleat and in these PC correct times having instant attention delivered to their problem, whether major or minor.

For those listing all sorts of odd problems it might pay to have a good look and recheck of your own various settings re chat etc, I’m running Windows98SE, IE6 with sp1 and messenger 8.1.0.209 and they seem to work fine and that’s on a very low spec AMD machine with a 500Mhz processor of some seven years vintage.

Obviously only time will tell. Rest assured I’ll be one of the first to report if it all goes pear-shaped and/or if they don’t iron out all the remaining niggles.

One thing that really worries me: Previously I’ve not paid too much attention to problems with chatrooms e.g. such as rooms declaring full even though they’d shown as half-empty or less when I tried to access them, to getting booted etc and simply put it down to problems with Yahoo and/or my machine/software. Now with all the comment about booters and room lockers I’ve done a bit of searching and found way too easily sites that allowed me to register and download these nasties, inc a latest version that claims to be able to overcome the Captcha sign-in.

Does Yahoo know of this as I’m pretty sure the actions these programmes are designed to allow breach an awful lot of telecomms/computer laws? If Yahoo would like to drop me an email I’ll post the offending URL’s back to them, I’m certainly not publishing them here (though who knows they may well be widely known already.

Comment by James and Kay — September 1, 2007 #
One final thing while you Yahoo guys are ( I hope) working to finalise this chat sortout:
Yahoo can we have “user defined rooms” back please so like-minded groups of chatters can congregate together again without treading all over the chat of other folk?
You website has been implying they would be returned for so long now that seeing the statement still there (apparently forever) makes a bad impression on viewing the relevant page.
You panicked/were bullied/took the coward’s way out last time. This time there’s nothing to stop you simply monitoring room titles/acting on user reports to pull the plug on actual offending rooms….a much more democratic process than killing all of them for all of us.

Comment by James and Kay — September 1, 2007 #
protesto per l’introduzione dell’antispam in quanto le persone cieche in questa maniera non possono più entrare nelle room……non è questa la maniera di risolvere le cose….avete isolato questi portatori di handicap che proprio per il loro problema trovavano nella chat una compagnia
rimettete le cose com’erano…ai boot ci difendiamo da soli ma non possiamo emarginare chi trova nella chat una compagnia e ripeto per i ciechi è impossibile entrare in questa maniera

Comment by alyssa — September 1, 2007 #
im using Yelite but i cant join a room coz ychat have a verification code can u help me?

Comment by igo — September 1, 2007 #
Now that the bots are gone there is nobody intelligent left to talk to. I say bring back the bots!

Comment by pyro — September 1, 2007 #
James and Kay, you said.. “If you have information to post here…make it clear and to the point”.

Perhaps you could set an example and stop posting 706 word long messages?

Comment by pyro — September 1, 2007 #
Since I informed Yahoo of this fix more than 6 months ago, repeatedly sent in until 2 weeks ago and it was implemented in the same way…..do I get some sort of recognition for it. Either large or small bills are fine ….I am not picky.

David

Comment by bigdog — September 1, 2007 #
I see many people complaining they cannot get into chat. others saying if you are not as smart as I think I am then you are a whiner .. For those, all I can say is how arrogant and pompous do you need to be to convince yourself you’re human.

There are help forums if one uses Google and asks about the problem they are having. Freecreed is a nice site which as helped many chat users for years. look it up and see if you can find what you need there. There are others. Do some homework.

As for Linux users, you use Linux because you wanted more control of your system and you wanted the tools Linux offers. Again, Google will lead you to working chat clients although admittedly the field is narrow at the moment. That will change. Linux gives you the options to do what you want so use those options. There are working chat clients for Linux.

As for the Bots, for the moment, yahoo has taken them down a peg or two but remember, they exist because there is a market for them to exist in. They are not doing it for free or for their personal health. maybe it’s time people took some responsibility for their own computer use and stopped clicking on spam and porn bots. Take the market away and these nuisances will dry up. Instead, I see people asking someone else namely, Yahoo, their own ISP or some imaginary internet police force to do it for them. Do you really want the internet policed for you or are you responsible enough to handle it yourself? Is China the model you desire?

While it is your own choice to use Yahoo or not to use Yahoo, It is true Yahoo handled the situation about as badly as it could be handled. They failed to keep users in the loop while spitting out a few notices every so often. This clearly didn’t do a lot of good in terms of public trust. People do not take well to be treated like children and doing so only encourages the ignorami to act like children.

Comment by the_snake_eats_itself — September 1, 2007 #
MY GOD PEOPLE YOU BITCHED CAUSE YOU COULD NOT GO INTO CHAT AND NOW YOU BITCH CAUSE YOU CAN WITH CAPTCHA AND YOU ARE STILL BITCHING.HELL IT IS SIMPLE STAY OUT OF CHAT…YOU PEOPLE WOULD BITCH IF YOU WERE HUNG WITH A NEW ROPE

Comment by pat — September 1, 2007 #
Looks like somebody broke the captcha. The site won’t even load now. Can’t get in a room without signing in. Can’t sign in if the sign in page won’t open. Sort of a catch 22.

Comment by Storm Watcher — September 1, 2007 #
Things look good now good job Yahoo!
,
Kazuya.

Comment by Kazuya — September 1, 2007 #
Looks like that within the next 24 to 48 hours, the room user limit will drop down to one, or maybe even zero, causing chat to be at a complete standstill.

For some reason, the room user limit keeps progressively dropping as time goes by. Please, please fix this as soon as possible, before chats basically die.

Right now it’s about 10 (or less by now). Last night around this time, it was around 17.

Comment by Venom — September 1, 2007 #
I tihnk i has to do with the ppl on the other side of the room you cant see and that could be why its not letting ppl in when the room only say it has 10 ppl in bots could be sitting on the other side of the room and taking up space is my guess.

Comment by Rob Madden — September 1, 2007 #
there is an option that you whiners can turn to called Paltalk, if you want 0 bots, and total convenience.

Comment by TMDK421 — September 1, 2007 #
Current Captcha system “issues” I’ve noticed:

- 6 tries are granted to each Yahoo! user. I’ve observed after failing to authenticate 5 times in a row if I authenticate properly on the 6th time (last chance) I sometimes will get in or most of the time I won’t and will be logged out of chat (even though I was never really “in” there to begin with). I think some consistency here is a must.

- When properly authenticating through the Captcha system many times even if the code is correct the room user list will NOT be sent to you / you won’t get into the chat room (depending on the room it appears OR the chat server you’re connected to).

- This one is known about BUT I’ll post it anyway. Even though the Captcha verification system is only supposed to govern over getting into chat rooms I do think that it ’should’ also take precedence over voice logins too. Being able to receive a voice user list of people connected to voice chat in a room that hasn’t even been entered yet is perfect grounds for collecting names from the RTCP voice server to send PM spam.

Also, with the way Messenger is setup it expects that the voice users be there in the room user list FIRST before it allows uninterrupted voice chat from them. You’ll hear voice-only users transmit and cut out even before you’ve authenticated yourself through the Captcha and this in itself isn’t a clean implementation at all.

Comment by Adam [Torseq Tech] — September 1, 2007 #
Just went into a room (Virginia:2) that was suppose to have 50 people. Actual count: 28. Of those, at least 5 were bots. Not great numbers!

Comment by Rick — September 1, 2007 #
thanks yahoo! . 75% of porn bots are gone . why someone would shell out 20 bucks for ytk pro beats me.

Comment by meesenger user — September 1, 2007 #
I guess a zillion features, chat improvements and serious Messenger enhancements wouldn’t sway me into buying YTK Pro either. Lmao. Get a life. It’s more than just spam filtering it’s got a feature list that is not only HUGE but it’s growing everyday.

Keep using Messenger by itself but don’t come crying to us when you get spammed, booted and voice lagged. Have a nice one buddy!

Comment by Adam [Torseq Tech] — September 2, 2007 #
thanks yahoo! . 75% of porn bots are gone . why someone would shell out 20 bucks for ytk pro beats me.
well look at the author what an arrogant burk he does himself no favours …
Excellent point

Comment by tammy — September 2, 2007 #
Arrogance? Don’t mistake it for confidence. I’m truly sorry for defending myself against a jerk on a blog. My apologies tammy (who is probably the same person).

Comment by Adam [Torseq Tech] — September 2, 2007 #
To Adam,
Well said son, from a near 60 year old (you know the age group who know nothing about computers and modern electronic gadgets).
You got it in one. You, and many of the rest of us, will always find knowledge and experience denigrated by the whingers and whiners who can’t be bothered to often do the simplest bit of legwork before throwing up their hands and demanding that a plane load of specialists and consellors be flown in to resolve their terribly important ickle problem right now.

To Pyro: I note you wanted the bots back for “intelligent” conversation. Just about sums you up then doesn’t it? My post said make the comments here to the point and clear. It was not a request for posts to be “one-liners” for those seeking “intelligent” conversation while apparently having the attention span of a lemon.
If you can manage to count the words (or did you load it into a wp and let it do it for you?) while nit-picking from them, then believe me, with a little bit of practice and patience, one day you will even be able to read them all and understand the message too.

Comment by James and Kay — September 2, 2007 #
Chat seems to be working now.

Adam, what a funny guy. You dont need YTK in order to prevent spam, boots and voice lag. Please, stop using scare tactics to get people to buy your product. All people need is some common sense (which, in actual fact, isn’t that common).

I dont have YTK, I dont intend to EVER have it, I never get booted, rarely suffer from spam, as for voice lag, I rarely, if ever, use voice chat.

Comment by Meri — September 2, 2007 #
I am cross-posting this from a previous blog topic, I hope this is in order, as you appear to have plenty of space on the page, LOL…

Hello again, Sarah!
I am happy to report that the Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart is managing to exclude a lot of the troublesome elements from chatrooms - it is named after Alan Turing, a British pioneer of code-breaking in the 1940s, whose work at Bletchley Park helped to crack the Nazi U-Boat code-books that fell into Allied hands during the WWII. He was gay, and ended his own life on account of official harassment; but I am pleased to see that he is remembered in the acronym CAPTCHA which is now in use.

The problems some people are experiencing in using the new procedure almost certainly originate within their own systems, as it has been working well here, so far. Sometimes there is a delay in bringing up the CAPTCHA page, but it works just as well if one copy/pastes the URL into the address-bar of an already-open browser page. I am sure there are ways of using sound-based verification codes for visually-impaired users.

The only slight gripe I have is that the respective functions of the Privacy and Ignore tabs in Preferences have become separated, and if one chooses to Ignore All Users not on Friends List (which is the only way of fending off programs which send floods of boot-bot IMs to one’s machine, and freeze it up), it is not possible to see text in a room, except from those already Added to one’s List. In the older versions of Messenger such as 5.6 v1358, this was not the case, and I am wondering if it is possible to go back to that, as I mentioned in my previous Comment on this blog-entry? If a booter decides to send boot-bots, it does help to have the Task Manager running, and to use it to right-click Yahoo Messenger in the Process list, and End Process/Process Tree; but this is a somewhat drastic measure! and only applies if running Windows XP or above - the beauty of the older versions of Messenger was that they gave access to chatrooms even for people running Windows 95 on dial-up… but I think it must be almost impossible to get into chat unless running XP on a Broadband connection, with at least 256MB of RAM.

I notice the messenger version has advanced to 8. 1. 0. 419 so I am hoping this means the programming team are still working on improvements in the background, and that you will be making Yahoo! Chat even safer. Thank you for all that has been done so far; I am staying with the latest version!

And thank you from all in the Jazz Rooms, where the sense of global community is very strong.

Comment by stalkers_bane — September 2, 2007 #
Sarah,

Thanks again for the changes to chat. I have noticed 2 problems that just seemed to crop up: Lately, even after entering the CAPTCHA successfully the room appears empty even though I know it’s a populated room. Additionally, for some reason I can’t see the names of the people voice chatting in the rooms now. I don’t know if these problems are a result of downloading the latest yahoo messenger security update recently or a bug that needs to be fixed.

Comment by jabadoobie — September 2, 2007 #
Dear Sara,

I can’t get the verification screen to come up.

Yesterday I was getting a 999 error (the verification page would load, but the image would not) and today I get the following:

Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

Most likely causes:

You are not connected to the Internet. (I most certainly am connected, I got here didn’t I??)

The website is encountering problems. (Is it??)

There might be a typing error in the address. (Is there??–I clicked the link in the room. I also tried different rooms to see if it was an isolated case. No such luck! )

Does anyone have any insight to what may be happening?

(I deleted my older version and installed the latest version from the Yahoo website. It’s version 8.1.0.419)

Thank you

Comment by Trying — September 2, 2007 #
i cant enter in chat rooms because the verification link does not work.i have tried many times bit failed.what should i do ?

Comment by rajkumar — September 2, 2007 #
to TRYING : only things that come to mind right now, make sure that your default browser is set for IE and also make sure your cookies are not blocked.oh and also make sure your messy is not set to friends only there seems to be a problem with everyone being ignored whose not on your friends list right now, so in fact you might be getting in the room but not seeing anyone. let us know if it works, good luck

Comment by Name (required) — September 2, 2007 #
Hi ‘Name’

Thank you for your reply. I tried your suggestions: IE is my default browser, I set IE to allow cookies, and Messenger preferences to allow contact from users not on my list. I tried to enter a room and when I clicked the link for verification, received the same screen as mentioned in my previous post.

I’m still at a loss

Comment by Trying — September 2, 2007 #
to TRYING; try it again, but this time copy and paste the link here, i want to try it

Comment by Name (required) — September 2, 2007 #
James and Kay, I’ve just spent the past few hours reading your concise messages. Thanks again for keeping your postings to the point!

Comment by pyro — September 2, 2007 #
to TRYING; never mind posting the link. I was able to get a 999 error on the captcha link by double clicking it. so heres what i want you to try; delete all your cookies, clear your internet history, log into messy. when you get the captcha link only click it once. see if that works for you.

Comment by Name (required) — September 2, 2007 #
also delete your temp internet files to make sure your pullin upg a fresh page

Comment by Name (required) — September 2, 2007 #
Thanks for the suggestion Charged… unfortunately, that isn’t the problem. I had to open up pm’s etc in preferences to be able to see people in conferences a few months back when conferences became the only way to chat without the interference of 100 bots and all the hiiiiiiiiii’s and BUZZZZZes from others. ugh…

Oh well… conference has become my preferred method and we load it up with 30+ people without any problems, so i guess that’ll be the way it is for me.

Comment by caity — September 2, 2007 #
hmmm let me think,it was adam who showed yahoo how to patch that room booter a while back ago and i think adam needs to go work for yahoo

Comment by markj — September 2, 2007 #
if you are having a hard time passing the verification screen on Internet Explorer, try downloading Mozilla Firefox.

Comment by john — September 2, 2007 #
Well something funny is going on. Says room full but when you get in there, there’s only 20 people. Yahoo needs to sort this out as I suspect bots are still trying to log in but getting caught by Captcha and taking up room space. Maybe a timeout for Captcha and the user gets removed from the room ?

Comment by Banger — September 2, 2007 #
Yep, because of the room user limit being screwed up. Probably because of the bots and people trying to join the room, but stuck in limbo.

Comment by Venom — September 2, 2007 #
I will say the CAPTCHA is drastically helping keep the inside of rooms free of bots. However, all the bots are STILL clogging up rooms and making them impossible to join!

The reason why? When you first join a room and haven’t verified yet, you still count toward the rooms total user count. In normal situations, this isn’t bad behavior. You want to make sure a room actually has space before you require the user to enter the CAPTCHA code, otherwise they’d have to fill it out, only to find that the room is full.

Now here’s the problem. Bots are still trying to aggressively join rooms. Even though the CAPTCHA is in place and they don’t make it to the actual room, they are still taking up room space. The end result is being told a room is full when there’s often less than 20 or less verified users in the room. I have noticed that you will get signed out of chat if you don’t verify within 5 minutes, but apparently this isn’t enough.

Yahoo seriously needs to do something about this since one of the most annoying side effects of bots are still around, not being able to get in to rooms!

Comment by Infinite Luta — September 2, 2007 #
BRING BACK THE FIGHT ROOMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comment by gene — September 2, 2007 #
It’s just a room listing glitch. You can still join the fight rooms by copy and pasting the following into chats…

/join The Fight Room:1

That’s an example. Can be used with any room number (that’s open).

Comment by Venom — September 2, 2007 #
Very good job putting Capcha in. The rooms are way better than they were… almost the way they were in the beginning. Thanks!!!

Comment by Kel — September 2, 2007 #
K sarah is great what u dont no is brilliant but now we got the bots that tried to get in rooms and failed stuck in list and you cannot get in some rooms cos they stuck in no mans land cos of captcha can u sort that please

Comment by aidy — September 2, 2007 #
K can u sort bots and stuff that get caught cos they cant get in room still blocking room list and stopping real people getting in
You have done good with the other stuff, and can you stop people getting voice before they entered the code thanks

Comment by aidy — September 2, 2007 #
OK my regular room is down to 15 people, someone needs to empty these bots out or no one will be able to get in!

Comment by Banger — September 2, 2007 #
I don’t agree at all with the Capcha porn bots still come in so my chatfun is over for good i feel very sad and i will not come in to any chatroom any more. Many of the chat friends i have are also not there any more for the same reason i’m almost shure i don’t see them not any more

So for me this the end good bye yahoo chatroom i will delete it

The End for me Herman in Belgium

Comment by Herman — September 2, 2007 #
BRING BACK THE FIGHT ROOMS

It’s not just a room listing glitch. All of the rooms in the Voice Chat category are not back to what they were before yahoo started making these changes.

BRING BACK THE FIGHT ROOMS,PLEASE

Comment by Zeus — September 2, 2007 #
I get into chat with no problems and I change rooms with no problems, voice works fine, I see everyone in the room. I may get logged out after 60-90 minutes, but it takes 2 minutes to get back in. I use dial up, on an 4 year old compaq using the newest yahoo messenger. I cant get into my old room wich was a higher number, but this gives me a chance to chat with new people. Thanks for the effort yahoo, I dont miss the bots and the few that get in I ignore. Thanks yahoo

Comment by terri — September 2, 2007 #
Please fix the chat room error message “This room is full. Please try another room. Signing in to Chat took longer than expected. Please try again later.” I’m getting very frustrated receiving the same chat error message over and over again, whenever I get online !! So now I’m stuck outside the rooms, hopelessly waiting to get in !! Also the CAPTCHA didn’t eliminate bots from staying out of the chatrooms long enough, they’re actually starting to crawl their way back in. LOL

Comment by CHEDZ — September 3, 2007 #
so the room limit is 15 chatters now? Sorry, but NO THANKS YAHOO

Pal-Talk is open guys….see ya there!

Comment by Mass Exodus — September 3, 2007 #
stalkers_bane

I read your post on the messenger problem.
To fix that, you should unistall 8 and go back to 7.0

Anything 7.5 or higher the “ignore anyone who is not on my friends list” will give you the problem you are experiencing now.
7.0 works fine and you can still concentrate on talking to your friends instead of others buzzing you and interupting your conversation.

Comment by Tide — September 3, 2007 #
I would like to add a thought here.

My concern is, is yahoo chat easy enough for new users not only to log in, but to navigate the rooms.

I feel that if I were new trying to get in for the first time, I would be inclined to give up.
Maybe try a different type of chat system.
I know that being new, I might at most, look around as it is today, not see anything great about it other then one or two non typing people in the room, then forget about it and move on.

Might want to think about that if yahoo plans to continue a chat system

Comment by Tide — September 3, 2007 #
The Voice Chat category is still messed up. Please fix it and bring those rooms back.

Comment by Zeus — September 3, 2007 #
Hi Sarah,
I hope you and your team were finally able to relax a bit after the July and August chat-fix sessions. I think you have done a great job in blocking the bots.
But some of them are beginning to get through again. I’m sure these are being logged in manually. I am seeing the ones with the name format ending in 2 or 4 numbers followed by a 2-letter country code appearing in the christian chat rooms. eg julianeknapp1989us or theresafalkland01us. They are not bouncing around from room to room like they used to do.
I worked in IT for almost 30 years before retiring in 2001 to work in construction, instead (LOL yes it is a pleasant change!) and I know the hard work you guys have been putting out, and I know about all the incessant criticism you have also endured. Yahoo chat is the only place I ever come to chat, and I have been of this opinion for 10 years now. Despite the issues that make it a pain sometimes, it’s still the best. Thanks Sarah!!

Regards, Van tha Man

Comment by Van tha Man — September 3, 2007 #
To Name (required): ((Hugs)) and thank you!! I was able to get the verification screen and sign into a chat room.

Comment by Trying — September 3, 2007 #
Oh I miss my dear Amy Amandas now!

Captcha actually sucks..Not to mention me and my friends have lost interest in yahoo chat…Yahoo rooms are pathetic now!

While I believe it was necessary to ward off bots, but there should be a better method..I am sick to putting in all the number all the time..it should be either session based so that users are not troubled every now and then….

One another thing is that..It has made chatting from my Trillion nearly impossible. It doesn’t show verify link in trillion chat window. Poor practice implemented by yahoo. No kudos.

Comment by Jack — September 3, 2007 #
Nice work done. Still have problems at my end. Even after passing the captcha test, it often don’t join the room. dunnu what to do

Comment by Sarfraz — September 3, 2007 #
Sorry to say the ‘capcha’ isnt working, i logged into chat hep 6 this moring and there were 20 bots in it. we still can’t get back into rm 1 it reads full and theres really only 12 ppl in it!!

Comment by So0o0_Confused — September 3, 2007 #
After a few blissfully bot-free days in Yahoo! Chat Help - they’re back in largish numbers and once again, we can’t get into Chat Help 1. Help!

Comment by Savage_Charms — September 3, 2007 #
Well yahoo,

I thought we had seen the last of the BOTS? They are back and Chat Help 1 is blocked again.

Was the ‘capcha’ a seven day wonder?

ozzy_has_been

Comment by ozzy_has_been — September 3, 2007 #
Yep, same with Hackers’ Lounge:1. And yes, the bots are back in large numbers.

Here we go again.

Comment by Venom — September 3, 2007 #
See how YahElite has implemented Yahoo Messenger’s CAPTCHA.

No need to open brower.

Yahoo should learn a thing or two from YahElite.

Comment by Nitin Goyal — September 3, 2007 #
My experience with yahoo over the past 9 years has not been bad until recently. I am at a total loss over what to say about my chat experience in the past three weeks except its a mess! I understand the issue with the bots, boot codes, mic lockers, pediphiles, threats and the need to record IP adresses but chat is currently unusable. Why do all these changes at once? I’ve spent three weeks trying to get into any chat room under the Voice Chat room list. They all say “Error or Communications Problem” and sometimes a list doesn’t appear for any room catagory! I have Yahoo Messenger 8.1 and have screened my pc for viruses,hijacking, spyware, malware and everything else I can think of doing. I can use Skype, Paltalk, MSN, AOL, and Ventrilo without any problem. In fact, I have found many Yahoo Refugee Rooms setup on Paltalk with other chatters equally frustrated! I can get into a yahoo room by using the new code but the rooms are all empty! The room list doesn’t let me enter any room with people because it says “Room Full”. I agree that Yahoo needed to make security changes and make chat more enjoyable for everyone but they messed up this one up badly! I am also wondering why Yahoo doesn’t send us a message as “Messenger Users” to explain the changes and notify us of delays and unresolved issues? In the meantime, you’ll find me hanging out with the refugees at Paltalk!

Comment by candie_sue2004 — September 3, 2007 #
when i click on the web site for verification i get the congratulation but after this i can still no access to the list of chatters in the chat room i only see my name and yahoo helper please solve the problem as quick as possible.

Comment by zakir khan — September 3, 2007 #
Congrats for the new chat entry…. it works to some degree and has sure tidied up the rooms and made chat more pleasant.

However, it does not stop you from being spammed by porn bots not in the rooms, or being pm bombed by immatures with booters.

The bots are obviously being inserted manuall, and then used to harvest id to be refereed to spam bots loggeed in but not in rooms, thus avoiding captcha.

The booters are obviously using the same technique

Perhaps you should use captcha on the actual log in to messenger? I can already hear the cries and whinging… from the booters and spammers etc,…
but that, plus a serverside restriction to ims from people outside of a chat room would foil the booters with their pm bombs.

Keep up the efforts… some more streamlining is required, but the progress is being made.

also, could you add a one click “report a bot” function? … it would also help you to identify booters, ..if you get a lot of similar complaints about similar named bots.. a trace by you would reveal the booter and you could then remove one of Yahoos biggest pains.

Comment by nscalemodeller — September 3, 2007 #
yeah come on yahoo the room limit getting to nil

Comment by aidy — September 3, 2007 #
you done good sorting out other in time please sort room list and getting in rooms going down

Comment by aidy — September 3, 2007 #
Paul..it helps if you download the newest messenger ..good luck ..marg

Comment by fun_size_marg — September 3, 2007 #
What would be nice to stop the booters that overwhelm you with IM’s is to add a new parameter to Messenger to only accept a certain number of open IM’s and ignore the rest .. say 10 for example as default. That way if you get a booter who runs a script to bomb your ID with open IM’s .. it would stop at 10 and keep you from being booted.

Comment by Rick — September 3, 2007 #
Ok well I see my latest complaints for getting into the rooms have already been voiced.

I will say this though. Yahoo has been nice enough to set up this site so we can make suggestions, or inform them or the problems we as chatters are having, and for Yahoo to keep us up to date as to their progress. Don’t abuse the site and turn it into a bunch of arguing and fighting or we may find yahoo has deleted the site.

Comment by kssnuggle — September 3, 2007 #
With the new update, I can’t access people’s profiles or get into chats. I click the link and nothing happens. I click the link for help and nothing happens. What is up with this???

Comment by sean — September 3, 2007 #
to SEAN: if you just downloaded the new messinger you might have to reconfigure your firwall to let yahoo have acess to the net once again. it sounds like its blocked

Comment by Name (required) — September 3, 2007 #
What is the point in having chat user limit in rooms when nobody can get in anyhow ?? Rooms still clogged up until now .. I don’t know how everything works techniquely but to me it just seems like one problem after another .. And no matter how or when Yahoo fixes it nobody is happy !! LOL

Comment by CHEDZ — September 3, 2007 #
Thanks for the effort of making chat bot free!Would be nice if you could increase the limit of users in a particular room. it’s at 20 now per room…size matters you see!

Comment by slvchld — September 3, 2007 #
Please somebody can say me when they go to come back chats of the Yahoo! Brazil?
What it is happening? The Chat of the Yahoo! Brazil goes to finish? Please, I wait reply. [-o

Comment by Minnie — September 3, 2007 #
The Brazil room has been renamed. It is now called Hackers Lounge

Comment by tizzy — September 3, 2007 #
I personally don’t see anyone from Yahoo reading any of this.

They copy an announcment with a name and we rant.

Old technique by many companies used to calm down the masses, but…

No one is there

Comment by Tide — September 3, 2007 #
can you please sort out room prob wtih people being stuck in room when they leave is making it impossible to get in lot of rooms

Comment by aidy — September 3, 2007 #
wow…………!
i simply works great….
nw i m able 2 chat easily in messenger

Comment by addicted guy — September 3, 2007 #
Sarah, I hope someone is still reading these comments.

My regular chatroom is cultures and community 1. The new changes rolled out seemed to work very well at first but the last 2 days everytime I try to access this room I, (and other chatters too), keep getting a “the room is full” window. This is despite the fact that when we pm other chatters who ARE in the room they tell us there may be only 5 or 7 chatters on the room list right then.

So just now I just had another go and could not get in, was just getting that “room is full window”, so I pulled out another id I keep for emergencies like this and lo and behold I got into cultures and community 1. There were only 6 chatters on the list.

Will someone please look into this. We are all missing our room and our friends.

Comment by iri_ani — September 3, 2007 #
excatly same problem with mah regular room …i don.t know wad is causing this but..YAhoo must look into this matter as soon as possible…

Comment by plzexplain — September 4, 2007 #
Hate to complain but why are profiles so slooooooow these days ???

Comment by Leigh — September 4, 2007 #
this new spam-screening system sucks…good intent…poor execution. It’d be better if you could validate a user only once & not EVERY time you change room

Comment by Peter — September 4, 2007 #
Gee Yahoo. I’m running an old 286 with 1 meg of ram and Dos 1.1. Why can’t you make your messenger compatible with it? lol Just joking.

It seems like people think it’s easy to make any type of software compatible with millions of different computer configurations without expecting the end user to do anything at all to help.

Get real people. Yahoo is trying to get things setup and sorted out. Just give them time. I’ve had problems with the new system too, but it’s not the end of the world. Be patient.

Comment by Storm Watcher — September 4, 2007 #
…the level of ineptitude is stultifying

Comment by VICE — September 4, 2007 #
“they can’t fix it”

Comment by VICE — September 4, 2007 #
Yahoo has done a wonderful job of making our chatting experience a better place to be. Congrats for all the work you’ve done and all the things you have in-the-works.

Comment by Rosie — September 4, 2007 #
I think at this point, the best thing Yahoo can do is prevent bots and booter programs for logging in. This means they have to drop the protocols below YMSG15, and force all users below v8.0 to upgrade. This should help out a bit…. for awhile, until somebody cracks the auth login.

Comment by Venom — September 4, 2007 #
It’s a bit of a bother that Messenger keeps reporting that a room if full, even when it isn’t. And it takes quite a bit of clicking to get to the right room of course. So this is quite a strain. Look at how it goes:
CLICK Messenger, CLICK Yahoo Chat, CLICK Join a room.
Then, often, the list of the rooms under the required category doesn’t appear, so you have to click another category, wait, click back, wait. Ah, if it is there… continue.
CLICK to fold open the room of choice, CLICK on the right room number. Room is full…. try again.
So that is 5-7 CLICKS for every attempt to get into a specific room.
The “/join :#” command doesn’t work anymore. That used to help. You could just go to another number and try to get into your own favourite room by repeating that (no clicking, just up arrow and enter, a lot better ergonomically).
So, nice start, but not quite done yet. Keep up the good work.

Comment by Saskia — September 4, 2007 #
Good job! Well done! Great! Yahoooooo!

Comment by Dog Clothing — September 4, 2007 #
I left yahoo ages ago because of the bot problem. Thankyou Yahoo for implimenting this. Yes it has it’s problems… I’m on Dialup currently due to being in a black spot for anything else.
One thing I’ve noticed is that I click on the link in the chatroom and it starts to load the verification, all i get most of the time is just the blue background, no verification window, no input area. It doesn’t load anything else. I have nothing else that depends on the connection running. Sometimes it doesn’t even load the window at all. This is using IE7 and FF.

Comment by Dial_up_user — September 4, 2007 #
Please update or fix the room again because names are stock in the rooms..

Comment by Deep — September 4, 2007 #
personaly i liked the porn bots( joke ) but yahoo has done a good job i think but, how comes the idiots still get there voice bots in and mass ignore the room so all u can here is them as not many peeps are intellegent enough to ignore them as they might find them funny.
cant yahoo stop them from having the advantage of yahoo chat altoghter by banning them from yahoo as yahoo does collect ur i.p address after all?
(quite new to yahoo so im proberly talking rubbish but i know what i meen)

Comment by steve — September 4, 2007 #
I hate to complain cause you people at yahoo did make an effort to eliminate bots but at the same time its a 50% job and 50% to go. Allow me to explain. When you enter a room you get sound automatically before you can enter the code you hear what is going on in the room. This allow the people who run voice bot programs to still put voice bots on voice and control the mic. You guys now need to try working on disableing voice until you hit the code this way these chumps don’t continue to manipulate the microphone. So please work on making it so no voice can be activated till the code is hit also that way it will control spam and voice controled bots.

Comment by Brother — September 4, 2007 #
Why does yahoo allow third party clients? They need to lock everyone else out and make everyone use messenger.

Comment by Ray — September 4, 2007 #
it appears that there are a bunch of “stranded” bots.
making a room appear to be full, when they are just sitting there, not clicking the link to start the captcha screen, or perhaps staring at the captcha screen and not knowing what to do.

whatever the reason, you need to add a reasonable timeout.

oh, its so great to chat again

Comment by disco-legend-zeke — September 4, 2007 #
please sort room amounts out yahoo

Comment by aidy — September 4, 2007 #
Anyone notice the rooms will show 50 users in the list, and then you click to enter and it says the room is full, and then you try a few times more and when you get in you see 10 chatters or even less? That is annoying. The room list isn’t being updated accurately or frequently enough to reflect the real number of chatters.

By the way, Yahoo should make rooms 1 to 5 always available no matter how few chatters there are. Some people like to return to the same room number, which may be higher than room # 1.

Comment by bots-b-gone — September 4, 2007 #
I have answered your silly puzzles several times, but still won’t me go into any chat rooms……

Comment by loveableannie — September 4, 2007 #
When I go into a room, no text is seen in the room. The only text I see is:

left the room
left the room

Why can’t I see other people’s text?

Comment by no-text — September 4, 2007 #
this works great (when it works). What I mean by that is this. when i try to enter chat i get the captcha i click it enter it close the windows and another captcha (In the same room) i ask a friend after if he can see me in the chatroom and no. On top of that no one can hear me.. Ive honestly gotten to the point that ive started using myspace a bit more. Yes there stuff aint any better but at least they do not lie about problems when they happen. Dont get me wrong captcha is a great idea but it needs to be better integrated and as you can see it hasnt fixed the problem SARAH.

The funny thing is the all time low in the yahoo stock man i wish i never bought.

sinceerly discruntled smalltime share holder

Comment by Robert Frayer — September 4, 2007 #
[...] for spim, blam, spaSMS, spamdexing, etc. I’m fascinated that Yahoo recently started requiring CAPTCHA verification for their online chatting service. Combine this with the going rate for CAPTCHA cracking style low latency OCR work (human powered? [...]

Pingback by CodePoet » Blog Archive » Hill’s Law — September 4, 2007 #
Sarah just tell the chat room users that you will close this service so that we will not be posting here.The rooms are full of stranded bots…if you can not fix this thing just roll back the previous chat rooms, atleast before the bots that were stranded in the room will be gone after 3 hours..

Comment by hard_kill — September 5, 2007 #
Thank you for fixing the bot problem, my only gripe now is that the way the rooms are set up, a new room is only created as they become full. People that were using other rooms as regulars are now forced into using the lower number rooms. Also, because those rooms become full of people who can’t get into their rooms, the regulars can’t get in. Chat used to be fun, but now, it’s kind of dull for me, because people I don’t know have taken over the room I chat in.

Comment by Larry — September 5, 2007 #
Could you please let us people of the fight rooms know if there EVER gonna be open AGAIN….
I agree that putting in the code everytime you change rooms is silly in my eyes, maybe you could change it back to the way it was..(winks).
I understand you have done this to stop all the bots and stuff but how come when I go in a room the room is full of bots(CONFUSED)….
Whats Going ON!!!!
Please sort this mess out…

Comment by Kerry — September 5, 2007 #
But this also is a big problem as i switch between different rooms, so is there any patch whereby i get the rooms without authenticating everytime. Please reply asap…

Comment by Raj Shekhar — September 5, 2007 #
P.S Yahoo….
could you please sort out why the rooms are so so small, as they never used to be so small…
Thanks….

Comment by Kerry — September 5, 2007 #
Waves to iri

This might be all we have left.

I’ve been in the room but only three of us can get in at any given time

I think the room and or yahoo is gone.
Everyone is going to a conference but we know how that works.
One by one people will tire of it, and just like when the old room got deleted, people give up and leave for good.

I think yahoo chat in general is heading that way.
New users won’t like this system or see the hype in it and move on to Ebay or something lol

I’ve tried for over 3 hours to get into our room but today is even worse then it was the prior two days before.

Yahoo chat is gone

Comment by Tide — September 5, 2007 #
Bot, bots, and more bots. They seem to be stuck in between the captcha page and the chatroom. There is one room that apparently has 50(according to the list) but 848 users with webcams.

If you look on the list for the christian chatrooms, all the rooms from 1-19 show 50 users, but all with huge amounts of webcams.

Comment by Storm watcher — September 5, 2007 #
i cant believe all the whining about having to use the captcha to change rooms…jeeze. Just think of it as a secret knock to let pll know your really you …LOL

Comment by Name (required) — September 5, 2007 #
I’m glad to see you trying to do something to stop the bots. But I this method is a waste of time.

The day after you started using Captcha I saw booter bots in Diabetes:1 and two days after that we had ad bots in Web Design:1.

I guess they must be manually loggng in the bots and then turning them loose on us. I don’t think there is any way to totally stop them. But atleast with Captcha they might get tired of manually logging them in and move elsewhere. Who knows? All we can do is wit and see.

Comment by Dwight Stegall — September 5, 2007 #
Thanks for this new system! Chat is much more pleasent without all the advertising. Your dept. has earned their lattes this month.

Comment by Katie — September 5, 2007 #
Again thanks Yahoo…but I see one problem…each chat room seems to have its own captcha passcode…the same one each time I enter the same room…perhaps iffen the code was different (like random is supposed to mean) each time someone enters it might put a few more brakes on the bots & clones

Comment by cheek_peas — September 5, 2007 #
I miss broke trish!!!!. Im kiding. like i said before the captcha is the best idea that you have came up with except it opens up yahoo for a whole new world of errors. Hopefully in time you can get it fixed. And to the poorly educated wanker that said blah blah blah everyone bitching about chat go jump off a bridge. Alot of us pay for yahoo services and the ones that dont still click the ads from time to time.

You are extreamly mistaken to honestly think that yahoo makes less than they put in.

Firt of all the ads all over the play generate tons of revenue. Cant say as i blame them if I owned it I would riddle it with ads to . Its a great source of income. So to all you people believing that nonsence go back to shool.

Stupid people come from all parts of the world.

Comment by Robert Frayer — September 5, 2007 #
[...] checking I found this was already updated by yahoo messenger blog. Email This Post To your friends OR Check out How to [...]

Pingback by Yahoo Chat : Captcha check to remove bots — September 5, 2007 #
For text question, first go to yahoo prefence,, in cat. of ignore, untick top box, “you can leave bottom box ticked”, then click apply an ok,,,this should allow you to see text in rooms,,, when all else fails make sure you have messager up to date,” good luck”

Comment by Dave — September 5, 2007 #
sarah and the yahoo chat team…. bots are getting stuck in the capture screen… put a time limit on it plz

Comment by xenon — September 5, 2007 #
thank you yahoo! . chat rooms are all cleaned up. I wouldn’t worry about booters that’s so 90’s. there is one last thing you should consider though. that is getting rid of all 3rd paartie clients and ytk pro. thanks

Comment by thanks — September 5, 2007 #
get rid of 3rd party clients??? why?/ u sound like a booter… a bit annoyed cos u cant boot them…and no.. chat rooms are not clear… its bots stuck on the capture screen… hence all rooms are nearly full

Comment by xenon — September 5, 2007 #
You have got rid of the botts but I try to get into a room I always go to and it tells me its full but it really is not. It won’t let me in because its supposedly full. What now!!!!

Comment by patticakes1940 — September 5, 2007 #
geez… stop being silly… ive already said why that is patti

Comment by xenon — September 5, 2007 #
The captcha is a good idea, only one problem though, the bots are still here! Yep that’s right they aren’t gone, they are just invisible because technically they aren’t signed into the room, but they are still on the voice server. So when I try to get into Christian Chat:10 for example, it says it’s full even though there are only 25 users listed in there.

Yahoo you need to fix it to where you can’t get on the voice or chat servers unless you are authenticated. Otherwise even though we aren’t getting spammed, the bots just parked there aren’t letting us in the rooms.

Please don’t do this fix halfway. We need you to take this the other 50 yards. Thanks for what you’ve done so far and I hope to see this last part taken care of as well.

Comment by Jon — September 5, 2007 #
gezzonly complaint i see is ‘room full when indeed only 4-7 chatters are there, just notice this recently.. room cap is dropping..but rooms with 15+ are easily accessable.. keep up the good work yahoo! but now stop and review your recent work and fix them..

Comment by __ChAnDLeR__ — September 5, 2007 #
put a rtime limit on the capture page… sorted… thats all they need to do

Comment by xenon — September 5, 2007 #
This simply is not working. A look at the politics rooms shows many filled to capacity, however, as many people have described, bots are obviously reserving a spot and just sitting there, never being ejected after what should be sufficient time to become authenticated.

It would be very much appreciated if the development team could acknowledge the problem and let us know if there are any plans to fix this.

Comment by w3bgrrl — September 5, 2007 #
After trying to get into a Kansas chat room for the last 2 hrs, I wonder if the yahoo engineers are even working or are all on the golf course with the supervisors.

Just think yahoo, how much revenue you are losing during this time and as the chatters move else where I am sure the groups paying for the adds are realizing no one is seeing the adds, since they can’t get into the rooms.

If the present problems persist, I would not get into to big of a rush to fix the problems, you wont have any chatters left to use the rooms.

Comment by kssnuggle — September 5, 2007 #
after having both my names stuck in a room for a few days now
after not being able to get into empty rooms because theyre “full”

bring back the freaking bots…ill have them anyday over this buggy Captcha

Comment by WickedJ — September 5, 2007 #
The bots seem to be getting through. One thing that might help. Put a “report as bot” link into the message screen like the “report as spam”. Then, when an ID is confirmed to be a bot, revoke that ID. Hopefully, sooner or later the folks running the bots will get the message they are not a welcomed part of Yahoo.

Comment by Carl27ga — September 5, 2007 #
>———> next generation bots have invaded yahoo chat rooms…this time they are invisible..lol

Comment by not again — September 5, 2007 #
not sure what the deal is……. geesh…… could it be bots??????? i can’t even get into my favorite room….. at all………. thanks for the week and 2 days of chat

Comment by kevin — September 5, 2007 #
So you know, new Yahoo! Messenger build out v8.1.0.421

http://us.dl1.yimg.com/download.yahoo.com/dl/msgr8/us/ymsgr810_421_us.exe

Comment by Venom — September 5, 2007 #
Fix it for Trillian. When I enter a room on Trillian, I get met with a user named “Yahoo”, instead of the chat admin. Yahoo says nothing and I get no verification link.

The Yahoo Messenger client is bloated and disgusting and I’d rather not use it. That and I can’t justify using more than one program to talk to people.

Comment by Jack Hinks — September 5, 2007 #
i think this is intentional coz i noticed higher number rooms are starting to come back and this is a good thing. i guess yahoo will fix things up when all rooms are available. keep it up yahoo ur the best!

Comment by jamesbond007 — September 5, 2007 #
I still haven’t seen a response/solution to the many posts about “typed in the code, got the congrats, closed the window… still no user names, no text, no sound” problem. Many seem to be confronted by this. I haven’t been able to find this addressed and responded to anywhere… What gives? It’s been a week… I’ve cleaned my caches, cleaned history… I’ve opened it up to receive pm’s from strangers….. and they sure see me because I get bombarded with hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii’s and BUZZZZZZZ but I can’t see anything in the room. Sheesh…

Comment by caity — September 5, 2007 #
Yahoo is the Yahoo Chat Admin actually. Trillian is incompatible with the captcha, and it’s a Trillian issue, not a Yahoo issue.

The Trillian developers will have to update their program to use the captcha.

Comment by Venom — September 5, 2007 #
Actually, the problem with stuck names and the apparent decrease in chat rooms user limit isn’t related to the CAPTCHA. It’s a serious bug in the new chat server software that Yahoo either has no idea about, or has been has been neglecting.

Now here’s the problem. Chat sessions aren’t logged out properly in many cases. If, for whatever reason, the TCP connection to the server is closed without first sending a ‘chat logout’ packet (internet connection dropping, being booted, etc), the old chat session will never end. After signing back in, your name will still be in chat and you’ll even continue to receive chat packets from the chat room you were in. To make matters even worse, if you log back in to chat and join the same chat room the yahoo id is ’stuck’ in, the old session will be repressed but not signed out. Even though the name won’t show in the room anymore, it will still permanently add to the room’s number of users.

Because of this, it is only a matter of time before all chat rooms have an appearent limit of zero users. Many rooms are already suffering from an extremely low, or even non-existent amount of space available space.

The solution is fairly simple.

1. Log out all chat sessions for a Yahoo ID whenever a ‘chat login’ packet is received for that name. The old server software did this, but the current software doesn’t.

2. Log out all chat sessions if the TCP connection drops unexpectedly. You are already signed out of Yahoo! Messenger services in this case; I don’t see why it can’t be done for chat sessions as well.

This single issue is very quickly taking all the fun out of chat. Bots where only part of the problem; bugs in the new server software is the rest.

Comment by Infinite Luta — September 5, 2007 #
stupid , foolish u made yahoo messenger USLESS and totally Obsolete

Comment by vxss — September 5, 2007 #
Well, it’s dandy that the bots are gone. They couldn’t spell worth a darn and so many of them were overly concerned about their breast size. Thanks for fixing that. However, I really don’t like getting tossed into a completely random room because my usual room is “full”. It takes multiple attempts for me to get into my room if I can get in at all, and I never see anywhere close to the fifty chatters listed on the room list. Is this problem being fixed? Could you please acknowlege the problem? I think it’s high time for another update Sarah

Comment by Loretta — September 5, 2007 #
The captcha worked for about 1 week lol now the rooms are always full & you cant get in at all….please OH PLEASE when will chat be back to normal???????????????????????????

Comment by Fanny — September 5, 2007 #
Sarah!!! plz update

Comment by plzzz — September 5, 2007 #
blind people are real people remember that yahoo

Comment by tj — September 5, 2007 #
Does Yahoo allow Linux/Gaim users to access the chat rooms??

Comment by Sebastian — September 5, 2007 #
Is Captcha really the best solution avaialble for keeping out the bots?

These are the problems I am experiencing…

1. Changing rooms is really irritating, sometimes the verification doesn’t work and clicking the link a second time throws up a 999 error.

2. Rooms often report full when they are not. I have not seen any room with more than about 15 chatters in. Where are the other chatters?

3. Everybody hates the automatic log out feature. Is this absolutely necessary?

Yahoo. Please come up with a better solution. Your whole chatroom experience has been lost from what it was previously. If you do not someone else will take away your market with a better product.

Comment by Chris — September 6, 2007 #
plainly and obviousely every since sarah has been product manager there has been nothing but problems with yahoo chat. You guys want a solution fire or demote sarah.

Comment by Robert Frayer — September 6, 2007 #
It is abosolutely unbelievable that a billion dollar company cant find the tech talent to resolve the ongoing chat problems and keep it perfect. Now I see why Yahoo keeps changing managers in all areas. NOBODY can get the job done. Chat is the most important social activity on the internet and “was” enjoyed by millions. Now it’s a daily crap shoot to see what fails or changes. All things considered, Yahoo is an utter failure at engineering a reliable, working chat program, controlling it’s use, enforcing it’s own rules and worst of all, COMMUNICATING with users. As a 10 year chat user, I am disgusted by the whole thing.

Comment by Redwood — September 6, 2007 #
bots arent getting thro… they are stuck on the capture screen.. yahoo counts u as in the room when u enter the capture screen…..yahoo put a time limit on the capture screen

Comment by xenon — September 6, 2007 #
“bots arent getting thro… they are stuck on the capture screen.. yahoo counts u as in the room when u enter the capture screen…..yahoo put a time limit on the capture screen”

There’s already a time limit, which is why I don’t think the ‘verification room’ being full is the reason rooms are screwed up and always reporting as full. Try signing in to chat, don’t verify, and sit there for 5 minutes. You WILL be signed out of chat.

I still believe the problem to be related to stuck names and another server bug which is causing stuck names to still still be counted toward the room’s user limit, even though their name doesn’t show in the room.

Comment by Infinite Luta — September 6, 2007 #
Sarah, it is time for an update

Comment by Loretta — September 6, 2007 #
What i see is rooms set at 50 when there are only 15 users in the room,,but rooms stats for that room shows 1500 web cams,,sounds like a server issue,,, good luck Sara Bacon folks workin on this

Comment by Dave — September 6, 2007 #
Sarah, any truth to the latest word in falsely filled rooms? What’s the scoop?

Comment by Dennis — September 6, 2007 #
yeah come on sarah wot is the update

Comment by aidy — September 6, 2007 #
Sarah and yahoo chat room team, please post sumthing about the chat room updates and fixes.

Comment by hard_kill — September 6, 2007 #
I’ll agree. It’s high time another update was posted. The CAPTCHA has done a good job at keeping the bots out, but when it was added a few dormant server bugs came to life, mainly the slowly decreasing room user limit.

We really need to know what’s going on over there. Are you aware of the problem? Are you investigating the cause? Are you already working on a solution? Just knowing what’s going on over there would ease a lot of people’s minds.

Comment by Infinite Luta — September 6, 2007 #
wt ever u tried to stop bot is the best work. But some ppl will get it soon and yahoo will be at her previous stage. Captcha can be traced. coz some expert may add captcha automatically to inter in room in clients.. how u will stop them.

Comment by fantazyk — September 6, 2007 #
Well, its great that youve found a way to stop the bots but in the process you have frustrated the HUMANS even more! Now you get put into room #2 when you use your favs list whether room #1 is full or not! Who wants to sit in an empty room? Doesnt this defeat the purpose of having a favs list when it takes you elsewhere? Then as a bonus you get to fill in your code each time you try to get to the room you wanted in the first place! Now I have to annoy my friends to invite me just to get into the room I want. Also, my name still looks all weird in the room so people dont recognize it is me, still cant load a photo to my profile, and in IM my name looks weird too! Yes, Ive checked my contact details and it looks normal there….I would rather deal with the bots than all this other bs! At least I can just put them on ignore and be done with them. These problems are a constant annoyance

Comment by way2cool4u2ools — September 6, 2007 #
something I find disturbing is when confronted with the issue for linux users who now are forbidden to even chat yahoo refuses to comment. Now that the captchas are added chat is completely broken for linux/unix sending us to a 999 errror page strat away no capcha nothing. Yahoo has not updated there unix version of messenger since i was a teenager and Im allmost 30 now. Mac gets there but what about unix? As I thought no respomnce. Unix users had found ways to chat through variouse chat clients but now that is impossible because the capcha server does not agree with the linux kernal. Yahoo I hope you rot in hell and im sure that the thousands of other linux users wish you the worst as well.

Comment by Robert Frayer — September 6, 2007 #
(As for Linux users, you use Linux because you wanted more control of your system and you wanted the tools Linux offers. Again, Google will lead you to working chat clients although admittedly the field is narrow at the moment. That will change. Linux gives you the options to do what you want so use those options. There are working chat clients for Linux.)

That is complete nonsence yahoo has broken linux chat

Comment by Robert Frayer — September 6, 2007 #
CAITY ! I too am finding exactly the same problems. Have wasted so much time searching all avenues on the net for even just 1 iota of explanation. .. I too can get through the log in code, enter chat, then see only my name and yahoo messenger on the room list, i don’t see ANY text typing on the in room chat screen. Isn’t there others out there that’s seen or heard of this problem also ?

Comment by Becky — September 6, 2007 #
Looks like chat is down again. Must be updating servers again, maybe yahoo can finally kill the bots. There’s always OohYa Chat in the meanwhile.

Comment by iabullrider — September 6, 2007 #
Looks like the rooms are down again. No matter what room I try, I either get a chat error or a user refused to join message. It was fun chatting for a few days anyway.

Comment by Storm watcher — September 6, 2007 #
same here…wtf yahoo..sort your friggin selves out…. jeeeesh

Comment by Pj — September 6, 2007 #
YEAAAAAA room one is open again and so far no bot!!! thank you YAHOO!!

Comment by So0o0_Confused — September 6, 2007 #
I’m in a room now, and there are 3 or 4 bots in here. Knew it wouldnt last long ::sigh::

Comment by Alex — September 6, 2007 #
Well each time i enter the chat room i enter verfication code but even then i cant see any body in the chat room whom with i could talk.

Verfication code matching doenst have any effect, while i close the window after it says i succesfully enter it and congradulations etc.

Comment by Muhammad Nasir — September 6, 2007 #
What ever you did in romance area, this evening around 6 pm est worked,,, fast log in to rooms no pop up saying room was full or closed, also notice very few web cams on stats, but when i log off later around 10pm lower chat room stats were showing over 100 web cams in rooms,, strange, if there are only suppose to be 50 user per room,,,Good Luck with the chat issue Yahoo Message Team

Comment by Dave — September 6, 2007 #
the bots are back in the rooms thick as flys now.yahoo needs to re-engineer their login to controll the proublem better.

Comment by paul j — September 6, 2007 #
i want to go to my room na e aryt!!

Comment by mr andoy — September 6, 2007 #
wow chat rooms are wokin great right now nice job yahoo keep it up…the number of user per room issue has been corrected i guess coz now i was able to enter rooms with as much as 30+ users with less bots! amazing! ur captcha really does work! and no body can bypass it till now! and i don’t see it bypassed any time soon lol “yahoo rules”!!!!!

Comment by james — September 7, 2007 #
yeah they are working good for now but i have noticed the room limit is decreasing slowly, same old crap…

Comment by syst3m — September 7, 2007 #
yep, sameo sameo….but dont we love it !!!! lol

Comment by Pj — September 7, 2007 #
OK, now the chat rooms are working and the bots seem to be out. Well done.

One more request, it would be nice if the verification code was made all lower case or all upper case characters. This would allow for faster keying in and changing rooms and would also still keep the bots out.

Comment by Chris — September 7, 2007 #
Chris, you never have had to type Caps or Lower..whatever you see…just type in lower case..it works..it always has done…requested granted..lol

Comment by Pj — September 7, 2007 #
“Wonder if yahoo could post the number with each entry on this blog?”

Comment by Dave — September 7, 2007 #
Well, the Captcha didn’t work, GA1 now has 15 bots in it.

Comment by Larry — September 7, 2007 #
what number , Dave?

Comment by Name (required) — September 7, 2007 #
ok - so today most rooms have disappeared and what rooms are left are 90% bots - it looks like yahoo may finally have found the way to kill chat without actually pulling it.

Comment by germ — September 7, 2007 #
lol germ r u sure ur talking about yahoo? in which planet did u came from?

Comment by james — September 7, 2007 #
why is it that a different box appeared in my computer? not the chat verification box?

Comment by cathy deyro — September 7, 2007 #
Ok so for with the new chat I have lost the ablity to click on any links at all. I can not check my mail with the pop link when I log on nor can I click a link that a friend my pop up in a box with nor can I look at a persons profile. I have also lost voice for 3 days. If I did want voice I would have to go to another room that I didnt really wana be in and then I even lost that. And now I am seeing more and more bots pop up in the room but yet I still have to verify my account. Yahoo has gone down hill so much over the past year alone. I belive that if Yahoo would like to keep the users it has now they would really give the problems its users bring to them the 100% attation that they wish to see. Not worry so much about bring out new stuff more and more. Or if they want to keep bringing out new things they should make sure all the other stuff they have going on it working to the best that it should be. I have been a long time Yahoo user now but of recent I have been going to many other sites to check them out b/c I am thinking of ditching Yahoo all together. Not what I want b/c I like to stay with things I know, but what do you do when your not happy with the service your getting anymore???

Comment by Duckie — September 7, 2007 #
Romace rooms in general were showin lots of cam’s in those area’s,, but no or limited amout of user’s really in room’s.After chat rebooted room’s had much easier access, cam’s list in stats were below users in the rooms after three hours in chat i notice the cam stats showed over 100 cam’s in certain room’s.Hope this answer’s the post’s question.

Comment by Dave — September 7, 2007 #
Personally, I wish to thank the Yahoo team for trying to get the chats back in line.

I for one don’t mind the security login… especially since it seriously diminished the bots in a room.

There ARE bots.. but they have to be manually logged in my their owners, which must be a total pain in the ass. I report every bot I see to yahoo.
=
I envision a team of Indians in an India call center busy loging in the bots - for a nickel a bot! {smile}

Comment by professor.wizard — September 7, 2007 #
Ok, this might be not in line of this message BUT!!

Is it gonna be were the rooms all shut down and people have to start over every time there is a new update of yahoo or to yahoo ???

That gets old quick , Yahoo just open them all and let people be happy geesh!!!

Comment by Julianna — September 7, 2007 #
no one can see my typeing in the chatrooms.i have did everthing i can possibly think of to correct the proublem.all my efforts have been to no avail.

Comment by paul j — September 7, 2007 #
Once again Bring Back the Fight rooms

Comment by jaded_soul_312 — September 7, 2007 #
Well so much for the extra password log-in actually stopping the bot problem. Just visited some rooms and many for the last week only to find out that with each day the number of bots just keeps getting higher and higher. Some of the rooms you can’t get a response from a real person at all and with the users names like “sally hot lex teen” you know the rooms are nothing but advertising bots again. The additional password showed so much promise a few weeks ago but obviously the spammers have found a way to bypass the log-in screen with ease. It was good while it lasted.

Comment by Dan — September 7, 2007 #
Paul, as you may of read, there’s a few of us that said we have that same problem and STILL no one has acknowledged even a mention of such issues which would be nice even if there’s no others out there that share the same .. PS : I too agree if this helps get the chat rooms back in line then FINE ! also i do not have a problem having to type the code to get through to rooms IF ONLY THE B***** thing would work ..

Comment by Becky — September 7, 2007 #
Everything was fine until today….

…messenger crashs now: 3 times in a row in 3 hours and the first one caused a blue screen in XP. No changes to my pc. No changes to messenger. No changes in software.

Great going guys. Keep up the sloppy work.

Comment by bots-b-gone — September 7, 2007 #
Is it me or is it that no matter what you people at yahoo do, it’s just one more screw up. Now aside from fixing your bot problem YOUR VOICE CHAT FEATURE when I click on a voice chat room gives me a “chat error” “communications problem.” When will that be updated ? Knowing that this is yahoo it will probably take you another million years to fix.

Comment by Richard Tanner — September 8, 2007 #
I also forgot to add that on my other pc. with the yahoo messenger that has the same problem with yahoo voice chat. I uninstalled yahoo messenger, and re downloaded it to see if the error would go away, and finally enter in a room for example “fight room.” This time not only the same problems still lingers. But this time when I go into a normal room I can only see a few people on voice chat talking, and NO ACTUAL TEXT FROM AN ACTIVE TEXT FILLED ROOM. Go figure…. you say the problem is fixed but in reality more just lingers.

Comment by Richard Tanner — September 8, 2007 #
I did follow the instruction saying but i cant see anyone typying in chat room…..

Comment by Nokkie — September 8, 2007 #
How about limiting the number of nicks per IP to 5, and disabling the use of proxies?

Comment by Parry Hotter — September 8, 2007 #
Not sure if this had been mentioned before, but IDs with empty spaces in them cannot be ignored even by the lastest version of Yahoo Messenger.

Comment by Lu Chin — September 8, 2007 #
I was over at a friends house visiting, his 14 year old daughter was chatting on yahoo in some room. All of a sudden we could hear this guy on voice shooting some nasty stuff and I mean nasty. Then I hear his daughter pissed off because she had to figure out how to ignore this guy.
What I found out was that Yahoo Messenger had an update which they did and as a result they can’t see the id of the person who’s using voice in a chat room. And that was the problem, she had to put 28 people on ignore before finally nailing the right one, then she had to 27 people off ignore. I

Now that’s nasty.

Comment by kbsoftware — September 8, 2007 #
Well, the bots are back. How they did it is beyond me. But I have spent the afternoon jumping between rooms and have found that the rooms are, once again, overrun with bots. Not as many as two or three weks ago, but as many as a couple of months ago. So the battle continues.

Comment by Bill — September 8, 2007 #
Well chat was good for a few days. Now the bot makers have beaten the new sign in. Nice try yahoo but something needs to be done about the bots in the chat room now before it gets out of hand again.
Thanks for trying tho, it was fun in chat for a week.

Comment by Jerry — September 8, 2007 #
I have found the same thing in the Kansas rooms Jerry. The bots are back. I have also noticed that at times Captcha bogs down making it harder to get into the rooms.

Also not sure if this is related to the current yahoo problems. But is anyone besides myself receiving “script errors” when they log on to messenger? This would be a system at work and after it loads and logs in I end up using “Ctrl Alt Del” to close messenger. Any idea’s would be appreciated.

Comment by kssnuggle — September 8, 2007 #
after thought. I have noticed the adds at the bottom of messenger do not appear. This also appeared when I started getting the errors when I log in.

Comment by kssnuggle — September 8, 2007 #
Last time yahoo cleaned the servers (i supposed) the stranded bots were gone but now they are back again( bots with Caps and caps exploits names) and filling the rooms with the same name use in other rooms.Hey yahoo,you have been case sensitive for more than a year then you let it back where the capitalized names can get into the room,yes its good but the names are not leaving the room.Be case sensitive again YAHOO,atleast there will be sensitivity left in your side..

Thanks…

Comment by hard_kill — September 8, 2007 #
what the heck is a 14 year old doing in chat anyway? That’s the parents responsibility to supervise their child..not yahoos.

Comment by Jay — September 8, 2007 #
K sarah great much improvement how about a update about what you are still doing now to improve it

Comment by aidy — September 8, 2007 #
YOU MAKE GREAT STRIDES DONT GIVE UP NOW COME ON AND WOT IS THE UPDATE ON THIS PLEAAAAAAAAASEEEEE TELL US NOW

Comment by aidy — September 8, 2007 #
Hello Sarah!

The Captcha system that this being used to enter the rooms of char it of Yahoo this already giving his first failures.
I have been present at the entrance from clones to the rooms of char those that have violated the system anti Spam Captcha.
I believe that they would have to use a Captcha system of letters and distorted numbers but complex that it prevents that the clones enter the rooms.
Greetings, Maryan

Comment by MARYAN — September 9, 2007 #
update:

verification codes:

X’s almost look the same as K’s maybe u can put the K’s in lower case

Please look into this matter.

Comment by guttsy — September 9, 2007 #
ok…… that was short and sweet, that help 1 is reading full again and there are only 12 people in it!!! it was fine for a few days after you reset the servers. is there anyway you can reset the servers once a day? maybe that will do something about the false ROOM FULL’ reading

please help me get BACK in my help rm 1!!! ( we cant help people if we cant get in there!!)

Comment by So0o0_Confused — September 9, 2007 #
Confused i really thing that is a issue with the web cams not releasing off server. I know of rooms that are showing over 1000 cams in stats an only 10 or 15 real folks in room,an yahoo tell you the room is full.

Comment by Dave — September 9, 2007 #
when ever i open chat from msngr i see a flash of the capture link then the chat window shows a german version of yahoo’s webpage… and the voice at the top is corrupt… i cant close the web page…it shouldnt be there…any thoughts?

Comment by xenon — September 9, 2007 #
Dave, then maybe yahoo should ban all cams untill they get the rest of the room problems straightened out

Comment by So0o0_Confused — September 9, 2007 #
here’s an idea……. eliminate the capcha, let the bots back in and open the room to unlimited users, my client gives me ‘auto ignore’ on bots, and unlimited ignores, i’ll be happy as LONG as i can get back into help room one

Comment by So0o0_Confused — September 9, 2007 #
Confused: I could not agree wiff you more :-d .
oO( but that would change yahoo chat, no more ding! ding! cam 2 cam from some that just think that they have to show off something.:)) which would be a good idea if you could not use cam’s in room’s!

Comment by Dave — September 9, 2007 #
hey Blog Gang its been awhile since I posted something I wanna know how I’m suppost to send yahoo a chat problem when I cant find a away to

Has anyone else been loosing their ears then get the yahoo has encounter and problem and needs to shut down ???

this started yesterday
I have the newest messenger and it was workin ok Friday…

Yahoo shouldnt put out a new version till they are shure it will work huh .

Comment by Julianna — September 9, 2007 #
I think it would be great if cams were banned from chatrooms. People could still use them in IM. I’m really sick of all the pervs wanting cam sex.

This morning, under the heading for christian, there were 1,664 chatters, but 9,325 cams. That’s ridiculous.

Comment by Storm watcher — September 10, 2007 #
Haven’t blogged before but just wanted to say thanks for getting rid of the bots and the verification is a good idea although it is a pain in the butt at times. Just wondering what you are going to do about the massive and I mean massive booting problem that is currently going on across the Yahoo chatrooms. Not sure you can do anything but please make sure it is high up on your list of things to sort out!

Comment by Julie — September 10, 2007 #
Bots have taken over windows: 4 they are fully entered into the room.

Comment by Rob Madden — September 10, 2007 #
Sure you have a verification process but when you get into the rooms you can see any text chat half the time. Over half of the NFL rooms are gone and when you do get in…only voice has been working. You surely can do better than this? If not…do away with messenger.

Comment by Bill — September 10, 2007 #
Seems the bots can navigate the new system better than I can. Hasn’t slowed them down a bit. Getting more offline spam than ever before.

When are we getting botkillers to patrol the rooms somehow…

Comment by Just As Many Bots — September 10, 2007 #
I was unable to see text in 7 out of 8 rooms just now. The chapta window said “Congratulations” but the Chat room window did not.

It’s been 11 days since this system was introduced and it’s still putrid. The very, very minor improvement does not compensate for what a hassle it is.

Any guesses how long it will take for Yah00 to make any other very very minor improvement?

Comment by mourning_still — September 11, 2007 #
I have a constant problem with being able to access my usual chat room. I either get a “room full” message or after I get my happy “congratulations” message for successfully typing in the captcha code I find myself in a room with only “yahoo” on the chatters list and a blank screen. If I finally do break throught lines and get into the room, it is nowhere near full.

I hope you don’t consider your work to improve Yahoo chat done with the installation of the new entry system. Obviously there are still issues to be addressed. I would think you would have learned by now that your customers get a lot less testy if you throw us a bone and update this blog once in awhile.

Sarah, please update!!!!!!

Comment by Loretta — September 11, 2007 #
For those of you who can’t see text in room… I couldn’t either until I updated from 6.0 to 7.5. The new one seems to be working just fine. You might want to try and update your version of messenger.

Comment by n0vice — September 11, 2007 #
I still have problems even with v7.5……

Comment by Dog Costume — September 11, 2007 #
8.1.0.402

Comment by mourning_still — September 11, 2007 #
You may want to think about upgrading to 8.1.0.421 the last new messenger,I have no idea what is new about it,I thought the 8.1.0.419 was working and I don’t see anything new with the new one.But try and upgrade see if that fixes your problems.

Comment by Kwazie — September 11, 2007 #
Can we have again the french room ? ( sud-est:1 for exemple ? )

Comment by Djé of marseille — September 11, 2007 #
still the problem with bots stuck with the capcha thing and real users not being able to get in

Comment by aidy — September 11, 2007 #
ALSO COME ON SARAH UPDATE on what has been done and what you are still doing to sort it all please

Comment by aidy — September 11, 2007 #
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
The Captcha waiting queue needs work
First Come First Served, don’t let the bots spoil it
you’re almost there!
or do you need a fire lit under your butts again?
re-evaluate, adjust,deploy
get on it!
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Comment by sea level — September 11, 2007 #
Well, yes, nice not to see the bots, however… the rooms are saying they are full with 50 chatters, and when you finally get IN, there is no where near that amount… last room was under 20 ppl in there.

And now, we get in after Many attempts, do the captcha, only to find we are not SEEN in the room, but we can Hear in the room. No text. So, I think much work needs to be done.. These are new servers, come on, I know you guys can do this!

Comment by Valerie — September 11, 2007 #
There is only one intent behind Yahoo’s new chat rule. It is a mass mind control of people. People,wake up..

Comment by The truth — September 12, 2007 #
I think Sara and the yahoo team for chat , have given up the ghost.notice no comments frm sara about ,how and why bots r bac in and we still have to use verivacation , whats the point.

Comment by andy — September 12, 2007 #
why cant i get in the chat rooms after i use the verivacation,i alway get a error 999?????????????/

Comment by diana — September 12, 2007 #
I can’t see chat room members even after verification …

Comment by Alli — September 12, 2007 #
Any issues with not seeing room members after verification is on the user end. I’ve had absolutely no issues whatsoever before or after captcha.

Comment by Parry Hotter — September 12, 2007 #
ok the chat cide is nice but what about some people havin sound troubles now Sarah ???

I go into a room and 5 minutes later the sound is gone I refresh and it says there is a audio input cant intialize and then I get the yahoo has encountered a problem and needs to shut down ??? what is this and how do I email yahoo ab out this problem ????

Well I’m not able to use messenger so I’ve went with another chat client but would like my messenger back but if they not gonna have it set back up right

Comment by Julianna — September 12, 2007 #
Sarah,

Please have the class and courtesy to let your users know what is going on regarding the recurring problems getting into chat. I’d rather read an honest post that admits that you’re stumped or that a fix is months away than be completely disregarded and ignored.

Comment by Loretta — September 12, 2007 #
The problem and its solution are blindingly simple.

The current captcha system automatically allows users to get a slot on the voice server before entering in the magic code.

Therefore bots who cannot enter the code don’t get access to the text server but get access to the voice server. Hence hundreds of bots occupying the voice slots.

These bots appear invisible to anyone using Yahoo Messenger, as Messenger only shows the users currently logged into the text servers.

But use a third party client like Yahelite that displays users in the text and voice servers seperately and you’ll see that the voice servers are overrun with bots.

The solution is simple - Yahoo voice servers should not allow a session on the voice server to be initiated until the capcha code is verified.

Your use of the Captcha system was a great idea badly implemented.

Comment by Dublin Guy — September 12, 2007 #
The bots appear to be filtering back in…. I second Dublin Guys’ thoughts on the voice issue.

How exactly does a bot get past captcha? I’m assuming that one would have to log in manually, and then just let the bot take it from thence on….

The captcha protocol has worked wonders in decreasing the bot traffic….

I appluad your efforts.. Keep it going and toss the bot makers out on thier collective ears….

Track them down and casue THEM some grief for a change! LOL

Comment by ANONYmoose — September 12, 2007 #
This does not work at all. I click on the link provided to enter a chat room and nothing happens. the bot security feature is not working.

Comment by sethplate71 — September 12, 2007 #
Tried logging into chat earlier today, and guess what ? I don’t see any text in a room, and voice chat that hardly works. Bare this in mind that this is in an active room I typically hang out in.

I’ve always wondered why you guys aren’t out of business yet. Especially when you the employees, programmers, and managers/ceos should be tossed out on your lazy asses.

Comment by Arby Johnson — September 12, 2007 #
Sarah, the natives are getting restless…… we need an update!!!!!!!!!

Comment by So0o0_Confused — September 12, 2007 #
Less than 2 weeks and the bot defense has been defeated. I didn’t think it would be any permanent solution, but it was woefully less effective than even I anticipated.

Are your heads in the sand now, or do you plan to make any statement to the effect “We realize the efforts we’ve made to decrease the bot population needs to be made better”?

Own up. We can be patient, so long as we’re informed.

Comment by silent_ben_strikes_back — September 12, 2007 #
OK let me see if i got this right. You log in to messinger, select chat and select a room. You get logged into that rooms captcha room. you verify the code , you get into the room you selected. A bot logs into a room goes to the captcha room, and just sits there cause he cant verify captcha…. Youre in your favorite room and Yahoos bot smoker smokes you because youve been in the room for 45 minutes. You get logged out. you log back in and start process over…BUT now you cant select your room because the bots are now filling up the captcha room so you get bumped to a room with a higher number…..HMMMM

Comment by ripping my hair out here — September 12, 2007 #
Maybe yahoos room booter shouldnt start kicking people until the room is full (after all , those in the room did verify captcha) and maybe the captcha rooms should be cleared every 5 min. This might help. huh?

Comment by ripping my hair out here — September 12, 2007 #
Or maybe yahoo is getting kick backs from the hair club.

Comment by ripping my hair out here — September 12, 2007 #
Bots are filling up..the chat rooms.
I think captcha shoud be used before a human signs in the yahoo servers.and leave rest at it is.I think Yahoo messanger shoud hab one more builtin captcha along with yahoo id and password field.
This will not only block the bots that are filling up the chat room spaces..it will disable all boot programs too

Comment by i think — September 12, 2007 #
First off i think using java was better than msg and some 3rd party clients. The bots are down and booters I dont mind I think all the voice chat rooms the fight room chatter box should be put back as well as higher number rates so people can open higher number rooms. If there is a prob go to a help room or ask a friend it is simple. Plus I think user made rooms should be back for all. If you have to be 18 then why not bring them back. Yahoo says they promote sex preditors what about all other rooms like nud cams and masterbation rooms. They r up dont u think that would premote sex offenders. And as for the room no long open why shut them down when you still have a hackers lounge room. And for linux and other users yahoo should be just as equal compatible for all systems. Thanx

Comment by Tra — September 13, 2007 #
i a m not able to enter if i follow procedure. i think better we switch over to old system. we can live with bots!

Comment by raj — September 13, 2007 #
im having a problem of entering chat room.please back to old system.im not good in computer just starting dont know anything help please!

Comment by karube ma cecilia — September 13, 2007 #
Isn’t there a way to design a “BOOT BOT” button. Then you could restrict the IP number, or something, from yahoo.

There would also have to be some sort of verification and a record of the reporter because hackers and everybody getting upset with others would also abuse this option.

Comment by just another idea? — September 13, 2007 #
I decided to try the messenger and chat rooms again, having been away for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately I can’t report and great change (read improvement) to the system. I reached the Captcha screen 11 times. Each time I received a verification screen that I entered the password correctly. However, I was only let in to the room on 5 of those 11 times. Less than 50%! I have NO IDEA how many other attempts I made that were bounced because of ‘full rooms’. Also, I’m still encountering instances where a room shows 50 users (in the join chat room window) but only has 20 or so when I actually get in. And… oh yeah.. still a fair number of bots. THAT’s a big thing… some one else just mentioned the issue, too. I can ‘iggy’ a bot, but it still hangs around the room taking up space. I’m still pining for the old rooms we had a couple of years ago… the user rooms that people could create and manage.

Comment by Rick — September 13, 2007 #
Everytime I use the captcha link, it take 98% of my cpu and I never get in

Comment by donny — September 13, 2007 #
get rid of capcha its a monster ! its like first u have to wait for rooms to show up.. u double click em and Immm Not worthY CApchA is there waitin for us with its wide open mouth and big sharp teethh o myy godddddddddd

Peace!

Comment by guttsy — September 13, 2007 #
Abusers could be blocked by email address if the address was verified during creation of each chat name. Naturally multiple logins using the same email address would have to be blocked.

Comment by buddymatkona — September 13, 2007 #
WORSE THAN EVER!

There’s only me and Yahoo Chat Admin in every room I get in. Frequently, I get the “You are not authorized to join the conference” message before I get the Captcha window — this freezes Chat AND Messenger.

Nice going.

Comment by mourning_still — September 14, 2007 #
WTF - I realize this is a “free” chat service but I though you guys sell advertising to be shown to chat users. Better start lowering pricing since less and less people will be using Yahoo chat soon. I understand coding problems but at what point do you say “we blew it” and back out the updates until you get things working right? In the real world (I guess if Yahoo Chat was a pay service) you would’nt let these problems continue for more that a few hours. Do you guys actually test the code before putting it on the production chat servers????

Comment by Dan — September 14, 2007 #
No issue with this extra step to login to chat room. What is annoying is, once you type in the magic words, telling me that chat room is full!! Why not first check if the chat room is not full and if so, force to enter the magic word:)

Comment by Jay — September 14, 2007 #
Its wonderful that You did something to keep out the annoying bots and for a while it did work, but as you will have seen, they are back and with that its again almost impossible to get in the chatrooms.

Why not disable or disconnect everyone with a cam in the chatrooms itself?

Next often those bots are silent in the room, just as often people keep “ghosting” after have logged out. Why not automaticly disconect all from a chatroom, when they dont chat in the room longer then for example half a hour. That way the rooms keep clean and can people that do chat in the rooms also get in. Those that are in pm and dont talk in the room, can log in back in the room when they are intended to talk in the room.

I think that way, You could solve a lot of problems with a minimum of energy for you to change in the scripts of your servers.

For the rest we can only be grateful that we are able to chat in a free way.

Comment by Ms.Sensi — September 15, 2007 #
Yet again, yahoo has screwed up. U click to join a room, get the catchpa, get a correct verification, and then it tells you the room is FULL. How bloody stupid. Don’t yahoo programmers EVER check what they’ve done ? I spoke to one of my friends yesterday, who spent over 2 hours trying to get into a room. And the data showing room usage is complete rubbish. it shows the same all the time, never change. Sooner or later, the advertisers are gonna find out Yahoo are loosing chatters by the 1000’s, and pull the plug. Sack your programmers YAHOO, and get your act together. I’ve already got a PALTALK account, if you don’t make dramatic improovements pretty soon, I won’t bother anymore.

Comment by robbiein uk — September 15, 2007 #
Trying to get into the NC chat rooms, it appears that the names are just staying in the rooms as people are logging out. Can you start back up the timers? I’d rather be logged out every hour than have to try to hunt to have to find my friends.

Comment by kermi — September 15, 2007 #
I think yahoo operates just like our congress,(nothing gets done right)

Comment by just_wondering — September 15, 2007 #
i can’t join any of the chat rooms, even if there is only one user i get the “error, room is full” message.

Comment by mec — September 16, 2007 #
So it seems it took what 2 weeks maybe. Now all rooms show 50 and full. Can not get into any of them. Have to waste time doing a entery code that just say room full. If by chance you get in a room, it is once again full of BOTS. Which the whole point was to prevent. Also why does the MAC version get IM Tabs not the XP version. I just wish the chat rooms would work.

Comment by Teresa — September 16, 2007 #
I am VERY unhappy with the new captcha thing. I answer the code correctly, it says close window and go to chat. I do that, and am right back at the captcha screen again. Grrrrrr! A friend said they saw my name come into the room twice , but i can only talk to individuals using ims. Whats up with that? THis is worse than useless as far as i am concerned

Comment by titusbear2000 — September 16, 2007 #
My only complaint is that I go through the process of typing the code, then I am told the room is full. Kind of tiresome.

but thanks for cutting down on the bots!

Comment by ray — September 17, 2007 #
With the list showing every room with 50 occupants and a number of cams, chat is still pretty much useless.

Typical Room:
kelly517kj: fellas lets trade pix
kute_torie_748: guys? PM ME!
VENUSojo7852: .
cute_natalya_498: ahaha
VENUSojo7852: .
yay_bernice_532: college girl here! who wants to do my homework!?

Five rooms in a row gave me a “not authorized to join the conference” error. When the sixth room did that, chat and messenger crashed.

Comment by mourning_still — September 18, 2007 #
i m very much disappointed by yahoo.coz of when i enter to a chat room my pc becomes hang out….why????

Comment by sohan — September 18, 2007 #
Captcha seems to be little too much hassle. I think instead of showing a link and opening the verification page in the default web browser it would be more convinient if the verification page was shown on the chat room window itself like those advertises which are shown whenever you launch chatroom window.

Comment by Jimmy — September 22, 2007 #
Kudos to yahoo for dealing with the bot issue! Seems this is the best solution so far. I dont mind the extra hassle with the captcha!
BUT it seems the bots have found a way around it already. I just signed into a chatroom and I currently count 7 bots in the room.

Comment by Abbey — September 22, 2007 #
Why not use the IP address (that you are recording) to limit connections? This would stop ad bots, plus the bots from indivuduals trying to load up a room to take control of mic & to take up space so other chatters can’t enter. Limiting how many times a single IP can utilize messenger at a time would put an end to server and space issues once and for all.

Comment by wayne — September 23, 2007 #
Hi,
Does anyone ‘real’ actually bother to read abuse reports? Several have been sent by several users complaining about 3 or 4 rooms being filled with variations on the same ID. For days reports have been going in, and still the same standard email keeps coming back.

Actually, apparently one person did get a reply from a ‘real’ person. It stated that the name was not recognised on the Yahoo database, so nothing could be done. Nothing could be done!!! What is that all about? If these variation bot names arent on your database, why are they getting in the rooms in the first place? Surely it cant be that big a job to at least verify the ID’s are on there before granting them access?

This needs to be addressed seriously, I dont get booted because I use ytunnel, but you need to be proactive in removing these people out of your rooms. What makes it even worse is that at 18mins past every other hour, all of your ‘real’ users will get hoiked out of the room, while these stupid ID’s remain.

Ian

Comment by Ian — September 24, 2007 #
Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but the bots are back very much in force. Every room I go to 1/3 of the room are the same old bots that we always saw, yet chatters can’t get past the captcha code, ingenious Yahoo.

Comment by Lola — September 25, 2007 #
Since Captcha test came in picture I am not able to find new friends on chat.
There are only two names in the messanger chat room.
So help me to overcome it.

Comment by deepu — September 25, 2007 #
Sorry to say, that after thinking something constructive was done about the spam, booter, and porn bots, they are bypassing the captcha… yes, today 3 of my favorite rooms are full, but, with over 20 plus bots in each.

There needs to be something that will work here, guys, come on. And once again, there is a lag in your updating us on the progress being made.

Comment by Valerie — September 28, 2007 #
Bloody waste of time writing here has been. Not one thing we’ve complained about has been corrected. Yahoo must be thinking the state of Chat is now “good enough.”

emailing “Customer Care” at least gets an irrelevant auto-response. Here we get nothing.

Comment by mourning_still — September 29, 2007 #
This is BS and isn’t stopping nothing it did for a couple days and now the rooms are loaded with them, its nothing but Yahoo BS and those posting in here the BS Kiss my Irish Rock. Yahoos priority has NEVER been Messenger, as long as they have been around one would think they can do something right NOT, One thing IF they were going to continue this is once you do the Verification that should be good enough to go into anyroom..Why is it that thir are a few chats thats don’t put up with the UNWANTED Crap. No matter what they do the others will beat them at their own game and thats a fact. Technolgy is suppose to make things better NOT in your life it only makes things worst and more complicated….

Comment by Nonya — October 1, 2007 #
[...] Yahoo! Messenger Blog ? New entry process for chat roomsAPS: standing room only. One of the challenges at any large conference is being in the right room at the right time - and then hoping that you can find a … [...]

Pingback by | onlyrooms.info — October 2, 2007 #
There is a misconception that yahoo can simply make an accessible captcha out of thin air. This is not the case; for if it were so, they would have implamented it years ago just as Microsoft has. A site called recaptcha offers a nice alternative. The problem is thus: when a screen reader finds an image on the web page, it identifies the image as what the image is. Say that you have an image called “captcha.gif”. Now, if a screen reading program has an alt tag attribute in the html, then the program will not say “captcha.gif” but something like “this is a form of captcha” etc etc. The program needs that alt attribute to specify text that might be in that image. Since captch is ever changing, it isn’t possible; hence the need for an audio alternative. I’m sorry, but having someone call me to let me know what characters to type is way behind the times. Sure, I could have a sighted person assist me, but blind people, just as all people, like their independence. Therefore, the audio alternative is a viable and more proffitable option to add to the captcha system already in place. Considering that it is now October, the issue has NOT been resolved as of me writing this entry. “We are working on it.” does not compute. Translated as “Well, we thought of working on it but are busy with other projects.” is more likely. Not an intentional oversight, but highly common in the arena of web development; yahoo being famous for such blunders.

Comment by Allen — October 3, 2007 #
This is insane. We have to type a captcha every time we enter a chatroom? This is the most un-userfriendly solution to a problem that i have ever seen.

Comment by matt — October 6, 2007 #
well the captcha can be a pain, especially when you wait only to find the room is full (once again with bots) and have to get out of the varous screens to try again. An error results if you just try to chose another room. Speaking of bots, it worked well for a few week,s now the rooms have more than ever. Pretty easy to sport and the reason most of the rooms are full.

Comment by pachat — October 8, 2007 #
Well,the BOTS STILL GET IN..And the other issue I have is that people send “IM BOMBS” to knock people out of chat..And at times out of messenger all together..Also,the same goes for just making messenger close alltogether..
The code thing DOES NOT WORK..IT does NOT cut down..Tuesday night,for example (early wed AM) the rooms in Police and Fire were all full of BOTS..
So nobody could get in…
So much for yahoo’s new so called “Solution”

Comment by Malia — October 11, 2007 #
Too bad this only worked for a day. It would be nice if someone from Yahoo would speak up and let users know if alternatives are being considered. Now I’m inconvenienced AND have bots in chat!

Comment by Jeff — October 11, 2007 #
The latest commenters have summarized what Yahoo! chat room users have been experiencing, inconvenience with the captcha and annoyance with bots. Word verification is never fun but people accept to go through it when they feel that it’s helpful in fighting spam. Real people have to endure word verification every single time they want to go in a room (and not just once while entering Yahoo Chat which is how I think it should work), added to that they still have the same problem with bots. I didn’t like the captcha solution when the bots hadn’t yet found a way around it but since most chatters felt better to have clean rooms I cheered with them thinking the days of bot filled rooms were over. Unfortunately it’s not the case and I think that with the current situation there are two factors driving people away from Yahoo chat, the bots and the word verification. As I like to say, I’m a room hopper, when I chat I like to go from room to room doing that with the captcha is discouraging to say the least.

Comment by Marguerite Jasmin — October 11, 2007 #
The Linux community continues to grow, I myself use Ubuntu on my laptop when I go online at internet cafe’s. I think it’s ridiculous and pathetic that you people can’t find the time to update the unix version to at least work with the new chat policies. You may not consider Linux “important” or widespread enough to waste your time with a simple update as opposed to updating versions for “major” operating systems, but as I said, Linux is growing and you are not being fair to the many users who prefer to use alternatives to the over bloated “majority” operating systems.

I fart in your general direction.

Comment by Chris — October 12, 2007 #
Once again, captcha is proving totally useless. All day I have been trying to get into my usual room (50sR9) but it is showing with 49 or 50 chatters with up to 30 on cam. I know chatters in this room do not use cams, so I can only assume that despite the so-called wonders of captcha the room is full of bots. This was happening regularly 3 or 4 weeks ago. Whilst anything that helps to resolve the pernicious bot problem is to be applauded, and there is no doubt that when the system works the numbers of bots are greatly reduced, there is no point in a system which appears to crash and makes the problem worse. The problem is that they appear to get into the room but are not removed, ‘real’ chatters cannot get in and replace them, more bots get in, and so on. Sort it please!

Comment by Cliff — October 15, 2007 #
How about providing a way to report removing clones?

Comment by inah — October 16, 2007 #
the bots are back in force……… what now?

Comment by tesserak — October 19, 2007 #
i cant enter in chat rooms because the verification link does not work.i have tried many times bit failed.what should i do ?

Comment by hns_khan — October 20, 2007 #
I can no longer access rooms. Every room I go into is filled with bots. There are 5 real people in a room and the rest is bots. Come on, this bot situation is out control. Not fair on the regular chatroom users. Only going to get worse if y’all don’t do something about this soon.

Comment by erica — October 21, 2007 #
Please take in consideration the fact that, after months when yahoo chat was disrupted by bots, now, certain rooms (as profesor chat no.1, book and literature no.1) are a tormenting challenge when i try to get in. It keep saying: the room is full, (50 users), but after many trials, when finally i manage to join the room, there are only a few chatters in there.
I hope you’ll solve the problem showing respect towards the fidelity of the users !!!

Comment by Mihaela — October 22, 2007 #
The switching rooms issue makes it too much of a pain in the ass to bother.

Please fix that.

Comment by Ghandi — October 22, 2007 #
PLease fix the bot problem..

Example today.. Alaska has 600,000 people in the whole state…. yet there are more bots logged in than for NEW York?

C’mon. There MUST be SOME alternative.

Captcha worked for about a month until the Hackers found a way around it….

How about a NEW thread specifically about the BOT infestations…..

The bot cloners have taken over… HELP!

Comment by ANONYmoose — October 22, 2007 #
Why are my post getting deleted? the last three I’ve put here POOF gone..

there was nothing bad in them

Can’y a large organization like yahoo take LEGAL action against the Bot cloners?

Nothing puts a crimp in someone’s actions then to get sued. Money talks…..

Comment by ANONYmoose — October 22, 2007 #
Yahoo better do something what if the one u pm is a bot??
and he/she put some hack in to it and steals ur password/username and hack ur acount i mean our “ACCOUNT”
in some rooms bots outnumbered real people 49 to 1
sometimes its full of bots its hard to see a room that doesnt have a bot…..spamming all around….giving websites..

Comment by yvhan — October 23, 2007 #
Lol appears the ”chat error” where text is not deliverd to the server bug is back also random disconects yahoo is going backwards not forwards WHAT A JOKE

Comment by timmy — October 26, 2007 #
“Messenger Chat Admin”. The message will contain a link that says: “Please click here to verify your account. This step is required before you can begin chatting”. Click the link and a new window entitled “Chat Room Verification” will open. Then enter the characters that match the letters and/or numbers in the Captcha test graphic. After successfully completing the Captcha test, you’ll be returned to the chat room and see a confirmation message: “Congratulations! Your account is verified and you now have access to chat rooms”.but did not solve this problem after dong this practice pls help me how can i enterd in d chat room pls remove this problem pls

Comment by steve — October 28, 2007 #
A Captcha test is required each time you enter a room, not just when you start a session in the chat rooms. While we realize this may slow down your ability to switch rooms quickly, this extra security is needed to help reduce the number of bots.

I don’t think so , it’s not be better

Comment by tfkz2002 — October 29, 2007 #
i am fed typing this stupid code everytime to enter the rooms.I change rooms 50 times every day.every time when i click the CAPTCHA link the IE tries to open it freezes my screen.this is time consuming.y should i type the code everytime for the role played by the bots to destroy yahoo chat.this is meaningless and irritating.i would rather love to be with the bots.YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOO GET A LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comment by fedup with this — October 30, 2007 #
To fedup with this:
That was happening to me too. Try this. Keep an instance of IE open. When you go to a room, instead of clicking on the C R A P CHA link, Drag and Drop it on the open browser. When you get in the room, don’t close that Congratulatory IE window. Keep it open for the next time you change rooms.

Comment by mourning_still — October 31, 2007 #
captcha is a useless thing and mere waste of time for users

Comment by agreewidu — October 31, 2007 #
My blue link still doesn’t send me to captcha–I still can’t get into a chat room—what is the answer?? Is there a number or a human at Yahoo that can give me technical support or is yahoo run by “BOTS”???

Comment by wasp_man21st — October 31, 2007 #
Do you geeks at Yahoo ever check a problem(getting past the blue link n captcha to get into a chat room) to make sure it works!!!–At least route the chat users thru Bombay n mb we can try to understand what the hell the hindus r pakis are telling us–We need human support—CHECK the BOTS IP address and block the buggers–Is that too simple???–Why doesn’t Yahoo have a phone number to call to ask these questions–I know they can’t be that cheap—Or could they???—So pathetic!!—I have gone back to just watching TV!!!

Comment by wasp_man21st — October 31, 2007 #
if captcha continues i will quit yahoo and become a fulltime paltalk member

Comment by sneezy — October 31, 2007 #
Well… all of this was to kill the bots… However, anyone who goes to a chat room is fully aware that the bots are very much alive and well and right back to being as annoying as ever. I spend the first 5 minutes in chat killing the bots.

What makes me mad somewhat is that the bots are so easily recognized I have no problems finding them… If I can find them so easily - WHY can’t Yahoo Support.

Build a “Bot Ignore” button in Messenger that when we click it, it informs Yahoo of the bot, and after so many hits assigned by the Yahoo Team, Yahoo will drop the bots access to the room.

Today I tried to get into the Nevada 1 room… I tried 18 times… each time the room is full.. THEN, when I got in on the 19th time, I find it is FULL OF BOTS!… VERY annoying since I had to rekey the captcha code with EVERY attempt to enter the room.

How about expanding the count limits to the room so we hit that “Room Full” less often!

My 2 cents!

Comment by Professor Wizard — November 2, 2007 #
It happens too much that i click the link provided the browser page opens and simply the page is not downloaded (no code, no text box to enter the code) !
What shall i do?

Comment by jackthejoker32 — November 2, 2007 #
Less bots ? I just cant see any difference before and after the Captcha chatroom verification was added… Rooms full of bots everywhere… It is exactly the same as before, so what is the use of this verification ?

Comment by fduret09 — November 3, 2007 #
What’s up with these chat error messages in the chatrooms. everytime a chat error message comes up and i type a message. I get booted.

Comment by erica — November 3, 2007 #
It Hasent helped. I hate it Stupid code thing take it off.chat error another thing wtf your you people doing

Comment by eric — November 7, 2007 #
Actually I am trying to enter the Yahoo chat rooom the process till verification is gone very fine but after verfication its not showing any user list in chat list. Why ths happn. It may be possible in 1 or 2 room but i tryed mostely all the room ths happn with me for past 2 days.. Any one plz give me wht to do?

Comment by rathesh — November 18, 2007 #
Captcha is no longer effective. Bots have resumed to previous levels. Yahoo either needs to deal with rampant bot problem or remove captcha.

Comment by lokanetra — November 19, 2007 #
[...] for having filled with 80% of bots beating out the human population there. Soon they came up with not so good idea of setting up a capthca check when a users request to join the chat rooms. Well it served for a while but then again it was seen [...]

Pingback by Is Yahoo Chat Listening — November 20, 2007 #
i just can’t join the conference whenever i enter a chatroom …and can’t even use the voice sevece

Comment by jo — November 28, 2007 #
remove it never worked for me go back to the good old yahoo days of old where people could create there own rooms. Why does yahoo get worst as the updates come out!

Comment by lex — November 28, 2007 #
hi,
i know only one way,
forget Yahoo! Messenger chat rooms !!!
this is now only for Sarah Bacon product Manager.

bye

Comment by behzad2045 — December 3, 2007 #
I think that Yahoo is doing the best they can to help give a better service (especially to those who dont pay?) it is easier to gripe about something when you dont have to do it.

The only problem i care about is the fact that I keep getting “pm bombed” and get booted out. Is there anything i can do to prevent that from happening? Is there some way yahoo can create a code that will prevent duplicate fonts *say any font repeated more than twice in consecutive order* from filling up a pm then stop the duplication? I find it only happens when you refuse the trolls to view your cam, and even when i dont have the cam on the still do it occasionally.. any help would be appreciated.

Btw, yahoo, keep up the good work, captcha works relatively well and if we can keep the bulk of those cockroach bots out, then your doing the best you can.

Comment by tanya — December 4, 2007 #
well since the bots r back in full swing then whats the meaning of keeping the captcha thingi still up?? if u cant fight with them u better take off the armors and let us chat in peace atleast…its really annoying putting the codes in captcha again n again …since the beginning yahoo have been the most user friendly IM ..now its the most unfriendly crap! and seems like the team doesnt bother to care abt it after even so many of their loyal users asking to get rid off it…rather they r busy with their beta 9 project…looks like we better switch to irc for peaceful chatting ..wake up messenger team..n have sum respect for ur users..

Comment by Nibirr — December 4, 2007 #
I recently started using chat and was disturbed by the extremely high number of bots. Heck there were more bots than humans. Additionally, many of the profiles in yahoo were bots, or at least spam. Yahoo needs to clean this up, it pointless as it stands today.

Comment by Joel Cory — December 11, 2007 #
since yesterday I can log on,i connect,but no captcha window pops up and i cant get into a room.My question is,if I did something to get banned,why did I NOT get an email ,a formal notice?Its only fair,since i know I did nothing to get banned.How long will it be before I can get captcha to pop up again? God,looks like im banned from chat and for no reason at all.

Comment by chattyblue — December 13, 2007 #
yahoo team needs to remove this captcha thing cos it has been cracked alrdy…wen the purpose itself is defeated, wats the point of keeping this verification process?? besides each time i change room, ihave to enter this captcha..its really irritating….y dont u guys keep session based captcha if u REALLY need to keep this…..now i dont feel like chattin at all…hope u guys do sumthing abt it…..cheers…

Comment by Yahoo chat is crappy — December 21, 2007 #
still lots of bots, Sarah! it sucks

Comment by reidt2 — December 29, 2007 #
The Captchas DO NOT work. Yahoo chat rooms are over-run with bots. Just do a search on Yahoo or Google and you will see just how bad it has got.

Yahoo are being irresponsible and their image is being tainted. If they don’t fix it soon they will go down in history as one of the most ignorant and stupid service providers. How can anyone be so negligent?

Comment by Ben — December 30, 2007 #
Booters are a real problem in yahoo chat. We have screenshots to show their ID’s and I know they use proxies but Yahoo does NOTHING but send and automated response when we report people using them. Many people now are also using numbers for their Yahoo ID, and the abuse reporting software claims that is an invalid user. Bull crap. Yahoo will see its demise because it doesnt have customer service.

Comment by Rick in WV — January 1, 2008 #
FYI Sarah Bacon, why do you limit the amount of people that we can ignore in Messenger ? And why are we reporting the spam bots, but they are still in the rooms - month after month after month ?
Yahoo will die when google chat decides to make rooms for people.

Comment by Rick in WV — January 1, 2008 #
please l cant still enter chat room cos the link do not open any box for verification for me

Comment by baby — January 7, 2008 #
Anyone know how to fix following problem? When clicking on link for verification (to enter chat room), I get no separate window (ie chat session) that starts up. Broken code? Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks.

C

Comment by camiller — January 16, 2008 #
Yahoo chat is a joke for couple of years now. Was much better when couple of college kids programmed it. It is a playground for booters and a forum for bots who reap off the ad revenues yahoo should make. All you can see in chatrooms folks from third world countries who are there to perv or scam. Most others left yahoo chat already. Can you give the job to kiddies again?….Perhaps they can straighten up this colossal mess and give the respect back to Yahoo again.

Comment by wixen — January 19, 2008 #
There are still loads of bots again in the rooms. If the captcha system is meant to be working then why are those bots there? and if the bots are there why do we have to take the pain everytime to get in to the chatrooms for? seems like yahoo doesnt bother anymore about its users rather they all bother about protecting there revenue collecting adds. If yahoo continues like this i really will hope google will do something about opening chatrooms.

Comment by Nibirr — January 27, 2008 #
read this http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20080118/tc_cmp/205900620

Comment by mjones — January 31, 2008 #
yahoo mesenger is not running

Comment by Shafiahmedani — March 6, 2008 #
sir , earlier my yahoo messenger chat room authentication was done by mozilla it has been corrupted so i had removed mozilla, i have internet explorer also but chat room authenitcation page is not be opened or linked by internet explorer how to do its seetings to connect the chat room confirmation page to be opened by internet explorer help me out sir

Comment by sudhir — March 16, 2008 #
Hello, i have been using yahoo messenger for a long time, now i am getting a wierd problem, when i click on yahoo chat, and select any category, am not getting any room list on the right hand side, its just empty always, am not even getting the message of “Getting room list for India” like tat…. wats the problem.. if any give a solution, its most welcome.

Comment by Dinesh — March 20, 2008 #
hi there,
actually i m facing a problem while entering into chatrooms, everytime that message displays(click on the link provided for verification) and nothing appears after clicking on that link, previously it was working good but now it working worst,i m not able to enter any of the rooms, even when the popup blocker is turned off.
i have downloaded yahoo messenger several times but atill i m facing this problem.
plz help.

Comment by Robin — March 22, 2008 #
it sucks..bots stillget in…the captcha window should opne in sam wchat window automatically

Comment by jay — March 25, 2008 #
hi…i hav problem installing yahoo messenger 8.1
i formatted my c:drive n tried to install a fresh copy of yahoo messenger but i dont knw y it doesnt get installed..the setup starts properly n everythng is normal the setup reaches 4% n den suddenly it reached to 100% but the setup is not completed…the setup is stuck at 100% n yahoo messenger doesnt get installed !!!!!!!!!!!
plz me out !!!!!
thnks in advance !!!!!

Comment by tjaks — March 26, 2008 #
[...] is that most of the time the rooms are filled with dumb chat bots. Some time back Yahoo! introduced captcha verification to enter into a chat room. This system worked fine for some days, but soon the spammers seem to [...]

Pingback by They break the captcha « Satya Live — April 6, 2008 #
captcha now works by slowing real people from getting in the room…bots still get in room…check out romance 40’s love 44 and u will see all the bots one guy has made to lock the room…so so much for captcha..but what else is new…

Comment by roaddancr — April 10, 2008 #
Tnx For Room Join Captcha Code !!!!!!:)

Comment by >>MeisaM — April 13, 2008 #
captcha doesnt work anymore rooms are just a s flooded as they were before it so just remove it!

Comment by Doug — May 14, 2008 #
i cant enter the chatroom.ther is an error

Comment by aida — May 20, 2008 #
The yahoo chatrooms are getting worse everyday with BOTS. Yahoo needs LIVE MODERATORS in the rooms to maintain control of the rooms and BOOT out the BOTS. The Captcha is NOT working but as i see it Yahoo just doesn’t care what goes on in the chatrooms or they would be cleaning them up.

Comment by Joe — June 4, 2008 #
Please help with captcha, always getting 999 errors….

Comment by goran — June 13, 2008 #
Hi

Does anyone knows how to get back the Yahoo! chat in the dropdown list of Messanger option at the top of the main window after login.

Thanks

Comment by anonymous — June 18, 2008 #
Such a privilege to chat with friends

Comment by hlampau — June 18, 2008 #
well you made it hard to get to rooms but now more bots then ever . next no chats in vista whos bright idea was that . lets just go back to old way charge six dollars and then you wont need the money you get from the bots you get now . sounds good to me

Comment by lenny — July 24, 2008 #
when I try to log into chat,the Verification screen,or CAPTCHA does not appear,it says this page can not be displayed.when CAPTCHA first came out I used it before,now it won’t work anymore its been months since I been in a chat room,PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!!

Comment by Lisa — July 27, 2008 #
I assume this greatly reduced the count of bots in the rooms initially when it was implemented, however, as of today the count of bots are even more than the real people in each room.

Is there anything in process to eliminate this mess in all the Yahoo chat rooms?

Comment by DiiV — August 12, 2008 #
captcha makes it hard for real people to get into rooms, yet now does nothing to stop bots from getting in. thinking yahoo would rather bots in chat rooms instead of real people. wondering if yahoo personnel rather watch the bot’s cams. (ahem). and..for those who would say ”well, it’s free” yahoo does make money off us else they wouldn’t bother having chat rooms…chew on that

Comment by roaddancr — August 18, 2008 #
This really sucks. I wonder why yahoo is still holding on to this stupid verification technique when the bots have proven that they are smarter than the programmers at yahoo. Or is it just that yahoo does not mind the bots infesting the rooms? Looks like the people at yahoo are trying to tell the users that everything in life has a price and this is the price that users pay. Go through a really stupid and useless routine to find out the room is full or has only bots in it. And if you get disconnected, you go through the entire process once again. Now it feels like the rooms are designed for the bots and human beings are not welcome! God job yahoo! Keep it up!

Comment by brown_wolfenstein — August 21, 2008 #
This is so stupid. I can’t even chat because when I verify my account using the captcha I get a “communication error.” I am pretty much done using Yahoo messenger services. Very disappointing.

Comment by gcm — August 25, 2008 #
Please help with captcha, always getting 999 errors….

Comment by sumit — September 11, 2008 #
its very hard to enter rooms… if i sign in then captcha comes out its hard to enter ..what is the use of it if evrytime i sign in and go to rooms captcha appears “FAILED TO ENTER CAPTCHA” even i did the correct one..

Comment by ashley — September 13, 2008 #
the Captcha code isnt working anymore..as i seen in an earlier post, its easy to get around.
I have a friend who is sight impaired, tho most ppl could give a crap less about them…hes my friend as i said and deserves to be able to go into a chat if he so chooses.
might as well take the stupid captcha down cuz the bots are getting back in just as bad as they were before.

you need to develop a filter system of some kind so that when we report the stupid things as “spam” it will actually block that bot for good!

with all the technology we have now adays …and this is the best we can do?

if u insist on using this program ..u should make it where site impaired can access a special get around code….im sure you can find a way of keeping it secret so the bots dont get it….need to pay more attention to your users…cuz not only do you have bots, but ur messengers crash fairly easy i might add…some features dont even work like they are supposed to…you dont give us the option to delete a yahoo 360 page, or our yahoo personals page…whats the use of having a yahoo personals page …once weve found someone…seriously yahoo….get ya thumbs out ya asses

Comment by Candace — September 23, 2008 #
I cant enter chat room “sorry unable to process this time showing what to do?
since 2 t0 3 weeks, whenever i was in yahoo chat room i didnt get voice server properly.that shows”,voice server disconnected try ing to re conect” so yesterday i have reported to yahoo for that.. but since after that even i cant enter yahoo. chat room.after captcha chat display shows “999 sorry unable to process request this time.” so what to do ? i need to go to chat room along with voice..help me pls.

Comment by jhanny — September 24, 2008 #
Yes, its sad to see that even after adding CAPTCHA verification, the bots are back. Although they are less in number but still they are a big annoyance. Can anything furthur be done to stop this??

Comment by Aisharya — October 9, 2008 #
Currently I can’t get into chat at all because the captcha code box appears with nothing in it no matter what client I use including Yahoo messenger. Wots the point?

The bots are back and have been from the first week - captcha code is now being used to lock real people out.

Comment by Nicky — October 26, 2008 #
LOL too bad this feature is now pointless

Comment by Ryan — October 28, 2008 #
Oh do I remember the days of Yahoo Chat when one could join user created rooms and chat with free speech unaware of the future in which bots created by man would soon take over. Though things where ran differently back in the day too. If I remember correctly there used to be live techs in the official rooms watching for bots. Maybe they’ll think of the old days. *shrugs shoulders*

Comment by Justin — November 12, 2008 #
i joint to chat room

Comment by Akhter — January 10, 2009 #
Employees: 15,000
Revenue: 7.22 Billion
R&D Budget: 1 Billion
Fail at keeping bots out of chatrooms: PRICELESS

Comment by James — January 16, 2009 #
The bots are back again. pity that Yahoo is not seeing all these. is it because of the MS takeover threat that yahoo has left their chat room like that ?

Comment by roch — January 18, 2009 #
Why don’t Yahoo just do us all a favor and close the chat rooms and put them out of their misery?
Or Yahoo has a contract with the x rated industry to provide a platform for free pornographic advertising?
There is no one else in the chat rooms but bots, young scamers and old perverts…
The captcha is just a great nuisance…and an absolute flop.
Nice going….

Comment by Mia — January 29, 2009 #
Sorry, Unable to process request at this time — error 999

Comment by aaa — February 1, 2009 #
wow, I cannot believe that yahoo still hasnt figured out how to keep the bots out. and yet you call yourselves a dot com company. why is it so tough to implement anti bot questions

1. have math questions, as captcha doesnt seem to work for you
2. implement random auth checks like sending a particular set of characters to yahoo server for auth
3. how about community filtering? have a report bot option and if an id is reported more than a pre set instance, then ban that ID is banned.

come on guys, I am sure it should be a piece of cake to implement some new stragety to get rid of bots.

Comment by DN — February 7, 2009 #
Well let me make something very clear for all of you that are here complaing about “bots” or “booters”

1. not all the bots are from people booting the rooms.
2. the porn bots you see pay yahoo to do that so of course they will bypass anything yahoo puts on..
3. paid bots dont get disconnected even if a booter trys to exploit the bot they dont get booted.(this should also show you theres yahoo at play)
4.minors arent allowed into chat anymore so now its an adult playground if your under 18 to damn bad get over it.
5. there will always be booters there has been since yahoo started there will always be from now untill the end of yahoo Get use to it.
6. theres many ways to just ignore the bots and boots learn about 3rd party clients

and finally my last words
if you spend that much time in yahoo chat that your upset with the way its done…maybe its about time you get off ya lazy butt and get on with your life

Comment by System32 — March 7, 2009 #