Brokerage Instant Messages Must Be Saved

DrEnter writes "According to an AP story on Yahoo!, the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) has told its members that they must keep a copy of all instant messages sent or received by employees for at least three years. This is similar to their requirements on keeping e-mail, although technically not nearly as easy. The NASD is a self-regulatory organization, and U.S. federal law requires almost all of the 5,300 U.S.-based securities firms and brokerages to be a member of it. There's a news release from the NASD concerning the requirement - it looks like the daunting technical issues have already resulted in some firms banning the use of IM completely."

Comments

daunting technical issues?

[Surak]

What daunting technical issues? Nearly every instant messaging client has the ability to always log conversations. Simply standardize the clients that can be used, make sure that conversations are logged, and lock down the configs so that brokers can't change them. I see no daunting technical issues here.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[Max Romantschuk]

What daunting technical issues? Nearly every instant messaging client has the ability to always log conversations.

Would you trust your IM to log messages? What if the logging fails? Will your boss listen to you, or would you rather not take the risk at all?

Re:daunting technical issues?

[Surak]

That's what IT staff are for. That's why you use standardized builds of client PCs. The IT staff does the integration work to ensure that things like logging occur. The standardized configs make sure that everything works and that users can't change it.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[funkman]

No its not. If they use AIM, then they can use the AOL gateway. The AOL gateway product can do also do their own authentication and force AIM clients (based on AIM handle) to use the gateway. The gateway can do all the needed logging. A strict IT policy to be followed by employees makes this task trivial.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[muffen]

As you said, they have the ability to log it on a client level. Imagine a company with 500 000 machines. Are you going to collect logs from each and every one every single day?? Even if you saved the logs on a network drive, do you want 500 000 different files per day?

The difficulty is logging the traffic on a server level. The reasons are many. I think this article describes them fairly well.

Basically, IM traffic tries to hide itself, generally as HTTP traffic. Yahoo for example prepends a HTTP header to all packets, thereby being disguised as a HTTP GET request. AOL/ICQ/MSN has the ability to use HTTP Proxy servers, and AOL provides www.proxy.aol.com for free (port 80, no pass). MSN will auto-configure itself to use a proxy server if direct access is blocked.

Here's the result of logging IM traffic on a client level.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[arkanes]

Missing the point - in this case, all the logging is done on client machines, outside the direct control of the support staff. That'd be a disaster if, say, someones hard drive failed and the log was lost, and then they were sued. Email is easy because you just mirror it on a server. You'd need some sort of complicated transparent proxy to log normal IMs, and that wouldn't work with encrypted conversations.

In other words - yes, it can be done. No, it's not trivial.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a very large Chicago-based financial institution that has banned IM entirely for their brokerage staff and disallowed Internet-capable IM for the rest of the company and I can safely say that a combination of FUD and CYA prompted this decision.

Basically, the bank's Infosec team was told to log everything and to ensure that no unauthorized external IM communication between the investment brokers and the outside world occurs, so instead of trying to overengineer a solution to ensure that only authorized IM occurs, they simply blocked outbound IM altogether and disallowed the brokers to have any IM client installed at all. Elegant? No. Effective? Yes.

Perhaps at some time they'll go back and address the situation more granularly, but for now, it fits the requirements and protects the bank from being targeted by the SEC. Staying off their radar these days is a "Good Thing" [TM].

Re:daunting technical issues?

[shaitand]

umm ok, last I checked it takes less than 5mins to write a shell script that uploads these logs in the background to an ftp. Pop it in a cron job and bam, all set.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[bmongar]

Nearly every instant messaging client has the ability to always log conversations

Client side logging is not sufficient. An employee can turn that off or delete the logs. The logging would have to be done server side. That would require a corporate IM solution which would log. I work for a company effected by this law. They don't allow any external or web based e-mail access for the same reason, they can't log it unless you go through their server.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[blibbleblobble]

"Imagine a company with 500 000 machines..."

If you have 500,000 machines running Windows, this will be the least of your problems.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[bleh-of-the-huns]

Its much eaiser to implement a corperate version of an IM server, that most IM networks now provide, then firewall off the other IM servers, forcing the clients to use the corperate version, or proxy all IM client request to std IM servers to the corperate one, provides central logging point, and peace of mind for the security personel.

On the other hand.. IM is not secure by any means, anyone stupid enough to use it in a financial industry for anything other then talking to friends and bullshitting around, should be shot.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[AlecC]

So you make it a disciplinary offence to install unapproved software on a PC used for financial work - which is what our finance department does. And occasionally sweem pachines for unauthorised executables.

At a certain level, it doesn't make sense to insist that something marginally untrustworth cannot be done. It is not as if installing a new IM client would be a way to instant riches, so there isn't the motivation of theft to make someone do it. A financial services house should have a culture that says that IT should approve all software. If you want play-around machines, they should be separarte from the "trustworthy" machines and firewalled off.

After all, employees could bypass the current email logging by installing hteir own email client, or by posting from a hotmail account or... But they don't.

re: daunting technical issues?

[ed.han]

having previously worked in a financial services company, i can tell you that most of them will already disallow installation of non-certified apps on the desktop. and of course, entire departments within IT exist to certify apps on the approved firm builds. indeed, at my previous employer, users are not admins on their own PCs and hence cannot install anything.

i cannot imagine the CTO saying, "well, IM is an important communications medium for the employee staff with one another so let's put together a team to address the scripting issues. we need to include the resulting gigs of data in our backup processes as well."

no, i think the liability issues will simply result in IM going away permanently within financial services firms.

heck, when i was working there, i wasn't even able to post comments to slashdot. but then again, we were obliged to run netscape as our browser and e-mail client: outlook was verboten.

[insert obligatory outlook joke here.]

ed

Re:daunting technical issues?

[pboulang]

not by any means? Ever used trillian? Ever read any news regarding AIM client with encryption?

I would be wary of what you say, because all blanket statements are false.

But, on the third hand, the number of people that use insecure methods of IM is disgustingly large, whereby entire industries could be made sniffing AIM coming out of market makers.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[Ulven]

Isn't this where Jabber can help?

The company can set up their own server, meaning that all messages stay inside the company network.

IIRC it also encrypts the messages betweeen clients.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[Red_Harvest]

Why not use IBM Sametime (PDF)?

Organisation-wide IM client with authentication from internal LDAP/Domino Directory

- no need to let AOL/MS listen in on your conversations, or open up your firewalls for that matter

- every conversation is encrypted by default

- server can be set up to log everything

There ARE other options than MSN Messenger/AIM, you know...

Re:daunting technical issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

last I checked it takes less than 5mins to write a shell script that uploads these logs in the background to an ftp.

I bet you're a perl coder. Re-read the post you just replied to. See where it says "all the logging is done on client machines, outside the direct control of the support staff."

Just because you have a theoretical shell script uploading stuff, you're still not in compliance with the mandate that says that all IMs be saved - in the example given, if the HD goes down before the shell script runs, then you still lose part of the log.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[sql*kitten]

Email is easy because you just mirror it on a server. You'd need some sort of complicated transparent proxy to log normal IMs, and that wouldn't work with encrypted conversations.

Brokers aren't going to be using just some random IM client they downloaded from the web, they'll be using something like this which looks and feels like a regular IM client (MSN in this case) but is designed for the need of the finance business, with logging to a server, encryption, directory services etc.

Re:daunting technical issues?

[shaitand]

umm and if the server goes down while the emails are being processed in memory, your technically not in compliance with the mandate that says ALL emails must be saved either. I don't have to log all IM's to be in compliance, I only have to implement reasonable measures to do so.

But why???

[jkrise]

Can't they simply use Echelon instead??

What's the value?

[monkey_tennis]

I struggle to see the value in this. If a broker wants to have an 'off the record' conversation they could still use their mobile phone or some other mechanism. Doesn't there come a point where you have to acknowledge that not all communication that takes place at a place of work is 'owned' (in a responsibility-for sense) by the employer?

Re:What's the value?

[darkov]

You're looking at it from the wrong side. The biggest issue is brokers is having clients ring up or whatever give instructions and then take issue later (when the trades goes bad, presumably) or the client saying the the broker told them X and it caused them a loss.

Re:What's the value?

[the uNF cola]

The slightest word from a worker's mouth on the status of the stock market in terms of purchasing, can give a hint to a stock owner to buy or sell.

This is insider trading, trading with information from the inside.

The proxy'ing is simply a restrictive measure. It makes it easier to detect. Yes, you can't monitor all communications, but it makes it harder to do live communications, especially since the sound of typing doesn't say WHAT you are typing.

After hours stuff you can't prevent, but then again, after hours information is stale and is less usefull... though could be useful none-the-less.

Re:What's the value?

[pak-man]

Mobile phones and other methods of personal communication are banned in trading areas.

Re:What's the value?

[sagneta]

It's not the employer that is making this requirement. The SEC has regulated such communication since its inception in 1934 in accordance with the Securities ACT of 1933 and the Securties and Exchange ACT of 1934. This is the law. Period.

Insider trading and information dissemination is strictly regulated to prevent classic insider stock manipulation gambits. To get some idea of how that worked you can read "Reminiscence of a Stock Operator " first publised in 1924.

Sam Waksel who was found guilty of violation of several securities laws and could have been hung up on obstruction of justice to boot is now spending 7 years in prison. He could have gotton 40.

The laws have become stricter more recently. Just before the bubble burst Congress enacted more legislation that prevented companies from providing non-public information to traders, analysists and the like. They mean it. Siebel executives during a dinner recently that off the cuff mentioned some data to an analysist are now having to explain themselves to the SEC. SEC is in a bad mood these days.

The point that is lost outside the industry is that the witch hunt is on. This happens after every debacle. It is not a technical issue. The IM infrastructure *must* meet SEC and NASD ( 1938 ACT ) rules and regulations otherwise the companies face prosecution and the individuals lose Series 7.

I am actually astonished NASD waited this long. Brokerage firms are all ready rushing to comply in 2003 because it has been assumed this would happen.

FYI

Re:What's the value?

[sql*kitten]

I struggle to see the value in this.

No offense, but you struggle because you're a slashbot and don't know what you're talking about. All communication in and out of a dealing room is recorded. This is so a customer can call up and do a trade on the phone, and then can't "DK" - deny later making the trade. Also, it means that traders can't pass on information they shouldn't to outside.

Traders want everything to be recorded. Those tapes can keep you out of jail.

they could still use their mobile phone or some other mechanism.

Mobile phones are blocked inside dealing rooms. And even if they weren't, even being seen using one would get you in trouble. Sure you can pop down to Starbucks and make a call from there - in the 10 minutes it took you to walk down there, the market's moved, any information you might be sneaking out is probably obsolete.

Doesn't there come a point where you have to acknowledge that not all communication that takes place at a place of work is 'owned' (in a responsibility-for sense) by the employer?

Like I say, you don't know what you're talking about. Sure a dealer can make a personal phone call, if he gets time, the bank don't care, they just think he's schmoozing a customer. The only time the tapes are listened to is if something comes to court. This protects everyone involved, the customer, the dealer and the bank.

Re:What's the value?

[harmoniousness]

Sql*kitten says: "Mobile phones are blocked inside dealing rooms."

Well, some! I worked in a certain big dealing room in London, where they even installed mobile antenna repeaters to improve reception. Use of personal webmail accounts was rampant. It was understood - if you're making a deal, use a taped line!

I agree with the first poster - someone has to acknowledge that not all communication is owned.

But there are deeper reasons for this.

To encourage logged IM is nice - it allows dealers to use IM for work, and improve their efficiency. However, once one dealer wants to make deals over IM, either all other dealers must follow, or risk entering into contracts on unlogged channels.

So the NASD is really saying: IM is a good idea - but if we want to use it for our work, we've all got to start logging!

That should be easy

[Daath]

Just build a custom Jabber server that saves everything serverside!

Call it Corporate Jabber or something... Users should, however, be warned of the logging!

Recently, here in Denmark, an employee of a company was dragged in court, because she was sending private mails from work (through an online dating site). The court ruled that it was ok, and that the company should stay out of the employees private life - even if she had some [private life] at work. Go Denmark ;)

Anyway, there are lots of things to think about when logging...

"Daunting technical issues"??

[The-Bus]

You mean, like the logs you can keep in ICQ? And if AIM/others doesn't support it, don't you think AOL will implement it pretty damn quickly so they don't lose market share in that industry?

This is ridiculous...

[brucmack]

What's next? Are they going to make it a requirement to keep audio tapes of all conversations, phone or otherwise, for 3 years? Surely they must stop sometime when the cost of implementation greatly outweigh any benefits.

Re:This is ridiculous...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually at my firm, we do log all calls made from our traders' phones for a 3 year period, it's more a protection against illegally/incorrect executed market orders, and liability mitigation and it is not an SEC requirement.

If you think this is bad, we need to have full data backups for files, fax, and e-mail transmissions for a 7 year retention. That eats up a lot of tape...

Re:This is ridiculous...

[tgma]

It may not be an SEC requirement, but isn't it an NASD requirement? I've been working at brokerages for the last ten years, and it would have been unthinkable for us not to have our conversations recorded.

It wasn't just the traders and the salesmen, but the analysts as well. Maybe it wasn't a regulatory requirement, but it's definitely part of doing business in securities, because so much is done over the phone. It was actually surprising how little we used those recordings after they were made, but maybe we were just fortunate. Mostly it was to check trades, but the threat was always there that if you gave out inside information, you could be nailed.

Interestingly we were allowed to use mobiles on the trading floor, but I can imagine that people are much more cautious in the US. Post-Spitzer, they are all running very scared. Most US investment bankers that I talk to now, virtually have to append a disclaimer to everything that they say. Must make for some interesting pillow talk.

Re:This is ridiculous...

[anjrober]

I use to work at a brokerage firm, a big one, and they do exactly that. Record each and every call that comes in. All of them. And the real kicker is they use the recorded calls all the time. They have to go back to the calls to find out exactly what was said and when.

Foolish...

[andreMA]

I can see drawing an analogy between email and postal mail and requiring the saving of that correspondence, but IM is better treated as telephone conversation -- which apparently isn't required to be saved.

Boom Town

[Deton8]

These new data retention laws are a boon to those of us in the data storage industry. If this keeps up I'm going to name my new yacht after the dude at the SEC (although "Cunt" is probably already taken).

Have they looked at facetime?

[alistair]

From the facetime.com website;

"Since 1999, FaceTime has been delivering instant messaging (IM) solutions for the security, management and control of IM in the enterprise.

Our integrated enterprise IM management suite of products address the challenges of:

* Network and Information Security
* Regulatory and Corporate Compliance
* Call Center Customer Service

IM Auditor has been chosen by 32 of the largest 100 financial institutions and 7 of the 8 largest U.S. banks including Bank of America and Wachovia Securities to satisfy regulatory compliance requirements."

The one thing that wouldn't be addressed is encrypted clients suched as the recently discussed Nullsoft "Waste" IM client. However, with businesses increasingly becoming addicted to IM clients and Blackberry devices, this would be a far more palatable solution than banning IM completely.

This is understandable

[Millbuddah]

Considering the recent media frenzy over Martha Stewart's case regarding insider trading, this really shouldn't come as much of a surprise. They're only trying to cover their own ass by having records for evidence if any insider trading information is being passed along with these instant messaging programs.

Daunting?

[kikta]

I don't see why they couldn't standardize on something like ICQ, Trillian, a Jabber client or anything else that logs everything. Then all they have to do is set the log to be saved on a network drive, rather than thier own. Is that really so daunting?

Shit, I have logs for the last two years on this system. If you look at my laptop, it has logs from 1999 back to like 3 months after ICQ was first released. I was "daunted", but I overcame! ;-)

Reuters already offers an IM client for them

[Anonymous Coward]

http://about.reuters.com/productinfo/messaging/

Its actually pretty nifty, corporate IM already exists and I am sure if Reuters does not have built in logging they will add it quickly and dominate another part of IT for the financial community.

Re:Use Trillian

[intermodal]

and for any firms wanting to use linux, BSD, or OSX on the desktop, GAIM builds above .60 all have excellent logging and even have a good division-by-conversation format. Though your best bet for logging it all would be a custom jabber server that would save everything serverside (with warnings at conversation starts, of course)

Yes they are...

[alistair]

Most banks already log phone calls, what is being added is the requirements to archive email and IM messaging.

Do a quick search for "Basel 2" or "Basel ii" for more details on this. One very interesting quote I found is;

"The Institute of International Finance has projected a total investment of US$2.25 trillion over 5 years for the 30,000 banks that will be affected, on top of systemsâ(TM) budgets, implementation costs and training. With such a huge increase in costs, this may precipitate another round of banking consolidation, especially in Asia. Basel 2 will certainly reward banks with sophisticated management and systems â" they should be able to generate higher returns on equity, and have less capital required by the market and regulators."

Already somebody's business

[hrieke]

IMLogic does this, and is quite good at meeting these requirements (one of their coders is a friend of mine).

As for the daunting bit, hyperbole anyone?

Re:record everything

[signifying nothing]

Don't get overexcited - this is only for communications with clients, not for purely internal conversations.

The Slashdot summary says otherwise, but the press released linked to is pretty clear.

Makes sense to me

[jamie(really)]

Brokerage firms make deals minute to minute, and conversations with a broker are legally binding. There isnt time to fax a contract back and forth. If you phone anyone at a brokerage firm, you will be recorded. Something to remember before you phone your mate and tell them about your weekend in ibiza. I totally understand why banks would view instant messages as the 21st century equivalent of a phone converstaion. Get over it!

Where I work...

[willis]

I work at one of the larger investment banks...

rules:
All emails are kept (Archived, not by us)
No external email accounts (it's a big offense if you use hotmail, etc, from work)
Internal instant messaging (logged, of course)
No external instant messaging (you crazy? Hell no -- you can't just install random software from the web on a trader's desktop
All phone calls are recorded (not sure how)
Cell phones are banned on the trading floors (I see them sometimes (and carry mine), but I think it's not cool).
There might be cameras, but I don't know.

All of this promotes accountability & transparency... and is good for clients and the market in general...

It's not like they look/read everything, but it has to be on file in case of a lawsuit, etc.

re: the guy talking about remote desktop, etc...
That might work at some firms, but I'd imagine most of the bigger firms are really, really locked down.

Re:Where I work...

[Surak]

All phone calls are recorded (not sure how)

That's not difficult. I used to work for a company that does this. There are companies that make reel-to-reel recorders specifically for the purpose of being hooked through a PBX phone system so that it can record all incoming and outgoing calls made on specific extensions (or all extensions you if specify it that way I suppose)

re: the guy talking about remote desktop, etc... That might work at some firms, but I'd imagine most of the bigger firms are really, really locked down.

How locked down? PuTTY can do SSH through any HTTP proxy server that allows CONNECT (which most of them if you want to support SSL). And it can use SSH's X11 forwarding capabilities. So setup a Linux box on a cablemodem at home, ssh into it and start launching X applications (i.e., gaim).

Re:Where I work...

[Eevee]

Timeline:

0700 - Get coffee, gossip with coworkers.

0800 - Install PuTTY on company computer.

0815 - ssh to home.

0817 - Get escorted out of the building by two rather large and unfriendly gentlemen.

0900 - Apply for unemployment insurance.

Re:Where I work...

[kindbud]

How locked down? PuTTY can do SSH through any HTTP proxy ...

Say goodbye to your job as a trader. Exactly what is it about IM that makes people hatch plans to get fired over it?

Not a problem...

[httpamphibio.us]

Every other client logs except AIM... DeadAIM, AIM+, MyIM

Problem solved.

Logging crypted traffic

[arth1]

It's easy enough to log encrypted traffic. Decrypting it afterwards can become more of a problem, but not unsolvable.
Clients can be modified to securely send a copy of their session keys to a central repository, for example.
Or the proxy can do the authentication for the clients, pretending to be the other end, and establish its own encrypted session with the clients.
Or, for dual-key systems, instead of the normal M*N pseudoprime, there's an M=(X*Y) where Y is a fixed value known to the company -- in effect a "master key" to allow decryption. This is already used for logging encrypted email from employees in many places.

Another thing is whether it won't be easier to just ban instant messaging altogether. More and more companies do so, both out of productivity concerns and for multiple security reasons (not only can it open up for bringing harmful content into the environment, but also be used to quickly send confidential information to those who shouldn't get it).

Time to revive "talk" :-)

Regards,
--
*Art

Most firms have done this for a long time.

[michael7]

I work at one of the large investment banks and instant messaging has become a large part of how traders do business. They communicate with people from other firms, quote prices, and even make trades. All of this is much more efficient and effective than email or even the phone. The recording of these communications is mostly there to settle disputes. If I quote a price to you over IM and you accept the trade is done, and if later you come back and dispute the price, there needs to be some way to settle it. This is the main reason phone calls and emails are all recorded and saved. It is a good deal for the banks, along for the SEC when investigations come up.

Not Mentioned

[endofoctober]

One aspect of this that wasn't mentioned in the article - is the NASD worried about chat sent to SMS-enabled phones they issue to brokers/workers? They seem to be pretty strong on desktop chat clients, but brokers looking for a way to chat without logging could always encourage clients to go mobile to get around it.

Tunneling

[borgasm]

Unless you have a fantastic firewall, instant messaging loggin can be circumvented by tunneling.

Currently, I have an SSH tunnel to my home, over which I encrypt all traffic, web, email, and instant messaging.

Pefereably, I would like to have an encrypted connection everywhere (thank you GAIM plugins), but this will have to do.

It is useless to log the SSH packets...so the only solution I see is to install a PacketShaper, and maybe filter out all SSH...but surely somebody must be using SSH legitimately...

Bottom line: logging communications is very difficult....

This is why they use enterprise class tools...

[Dave21212]

The "big three" personal IM clients (AOL, MSN, Yahoo) are great for talking to Aunt Martha, but if you need reliability, accountability, security, logging, programmability, presence, etc... use tools suitable for the work environment like IBM SameTime IBM already has like 80% of the big corporate IM market - and this is more bad news for the AOL/MSNs of the world. (SMBs and those with Jabber, etc, please don't feel slighted - those are great tools also I hear)

This should be good news for Lotus/IBM as companies abandon the toys (AOL/MSN/Yahoo) and go for the tools.

(Sorry, obligatory SCO/IBM suit reference not included ;)

Firewall

[bobthemuse]

I've seen this done for several small facilities using almost any kind of firewall which supports masquerading (which would be almost all of them). Simple forward all the IM traffic to a dedicated logging machine, which then forwards it to the true IM server. By blocking access to the IM server on all but the redirected ports, there is no way to bypass it. How is this technically difficult?

AIM Enterprise

[Phroggy]

Isn't this exactly what AIM Enterprise was created for? Why have I not seen anyone mention it?

Solutions Exist

[gioan]

I've been doing security/messaging work in the banking/brokerage area for about ten years, and here's the summary, since it's clear few replying are looking at it from the industry perspective.

There are no "daunting technical issues" to this, but rather cost concerns (and some functionality and implementation ignorance). It is relatively easy to satisfy the NASD/SEC requirements. Logging this locally (at whatever number of clients you have) is not practical (to put it tactfully). You need to log centrally, archive and ship offsite. Storage media varies, but the SEC/NASD still likes WORM due to its durability. There are offsite storage companies (like IronMountain) offering commercial storage options for this. The regulatory guidance until this memo has been fairly foggy, but essentially it's treated the same as other electronic client communications (specifically, email).

There are a number of solutions to this, including products from Facetime (AOL's corporate product is based on it), IMLogic, and Iconix. None of these is freeware/open-source, and never will be. The goals are stability, easy access to often-nontechnical legal and compliance divisions, and most of all, accuracy and the ability to retrieve content when needed. And believe me, none of this is a laughing matter or religious open-source-versus-Microsoft debate when facing a multi-million-dollar dispute over trading executions.

Reuters just implemented reliable logging for IM

[dmir]

Reuters just launched "IM for financial community"
One of the fetures: - Optional message logging features to meet industry compliance requirements
News Release - Reuters to Expand Instant Messaging Community within the Financial Services Industry
Reuters Products - Reuters Messaging

Jabber: All message go through server

[Anm]

This is one of the stronger reasons there is growing corporate support for Jabber:
* All messages go through the server, so they are easy to log.
* Servers can be set up internally, helping security.
* Clients available for all desktop OSes. Good clients available for Linux & Windows. A few mobile clients already out there.
* Gateways available for all other major IM services means clients don't need to change services. The major caveat is that not all features are in place for most carriers. In fact you can only really count on one-on-one ASCII text messaging last I checked. That is still pretty magor though!!
* Support options available through Jabber.com

All of these are reasons why my bets are on Jabber to gain acceptance over SIMPLE when in comes to IM. That said, SIMPLE may win a niche in minimal bandwidth specialty applications.

Anm