AOL Selling AIM Gateway/Listener To Employers

PizzaFace writes "After pushing free instant messaging to more than 100,000,000 users, AOL is now selling AIM-monitoring software to businesses that want to monitor and control the messaging of their employees. AIM Enterprise Gateway will reportedly sell for about $35/employee/year."

Comments

Going to war using AIM?

[RobertTaylor]

"Ritter anticipates that encrypted instant messaging will appeal greatly to federal agencies that want secure, interagency instant messaging. "Our military and intelligence customers are more interested in the secure version," Ritter said."

Jeez, better off with RogerWilco than AIM to communicate on the battlefield ;)

Privacy = Bye Bye

[docstrange]

*friendly aol voice speaking*
"You Got Fired!"

This explains a lot

[georgeha]

I thought it was just an unfortunate coincidence when my boss and HR popped into my cube when my pants were down around my ankle due to that hot chat with an 18/f Solaris admin.

Re:This explains a lot

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Solaris admins? Freak. Why can't you just be into feet like everyone else on the Internet?

Re:Yet another reason to use Trillian

[MrFredBloggs]

Yeah, right.

"Hey boss, Karen in Accounts sent out 54 megs of messages last month"
"What were they about?"
"Dunno, they were all just squiggly characters"
"Ok, well lets just assume its work related. After all, like all other companies, we use pokey messaging software to talk to clients. Let me know when it looks like she's wasting my time and money."

Insert Subject Here

[Veovis]

My managers are listening to my phone calls

My managers are reading my e-mail

My managers are reading my IMs

My managers are monitoring what candy I get from the vending machine

You know for someone who is supposed to be in charge of managing a department/whatever, has work (or should have) of their own to do, he's taking a really big interest in what I'm doing back here.

Re:Insert Subject Here

[Dr Caleb]

Dave, get back to work and stop posting on /.

The emoticons are a plus on the battfield.

[iamwoodyjones]

But with AIM you could write very important messages across the battefiled such as

Solider5554: Sarge! We're under fire! We need help! :-(

Sarge0034: Hang in there. You're doing a great job solider :-)

Solider5554: Arrrghhh!!!! I've been hit! :-O

Sarge0034: God, these whining soliders never know when to quit, that god they're dispensible. ;)

Sarge0034: Oppsss. Wrong person sorry.

Solider5554: What!? I need a chopper. I'm losing a lot of blood over here. >:-@

Sarge0034 (warn 10%): Hey, just because you've warned me anonymously, doesn't mean I don't know it's you.

Sarge0034: brb *door slam* as sarge leaves

*door open* as sarge enters

Sarge0034: Sorry had to reboot, did I miss anything?

Solider324: uuuuhhhhhh I don't think I'm going to make it

Underestimating AIM Users

[Shamanin]

Most AIM users manually encrypt their message using a collection of complex command line tools. Therefore, the content IS secure.

I thought everyone knew that!

As the old saying goes...

[Soko]

"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and you get to sell him fishing gear for a lifetime." :-/

Soko

marketing....

[Anonymous Coward]

"So easy to spy with, no wonder its Number 1!"

Re:Why a big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

So AOL gives away IM service, makes it impossible to block, but then sells a sniffer. What's next? They'll sell super-encrypted service for a fee to the user base, then a few years down the road, they'll sell an unencryption ad-on to the sniffer, then...

Is it just me, or does that business plan sound familiar?

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

cybersex, or to give away sensitive information. (Or both, as the case my be.)

53xx33Gur1 Are you touching yourself?

k0rp0r@73dR0n3 Oh yeah, baby

53xx33Gur1 Tell me something sexy, baby

k0rp0r@73dR0n3 Uh huh, we're expanding into the Korean peninsula FY 2004 and out 3rd quarter profits were up by 7.2 percent. I have a nine-inch cock.