MSN Messenger Kickbans Third-Party IM Clients

No_Weak_Heart writes "As reported here back in August, October 15th is the day Microsoft set to ban third party clients from logging in to their IM service. This eWeek article notes that the day is upon us, and MS is offering few details about its progress in creating licensing agreements to continue access. The licensing issue was previously discussed here. And my copy of Fire cannot log in. Anyone else find their IM clients non-responsive?"

Comments

Trillian seems ok

[Stripes007]

My trillian .74F seems to be responsive

Re:Trillian seems ok

[mubar]

I second that. Currently the upgraded Trillian Basic 0.74 F works just fine.

Gaim...

[Captain Large Face]

Seems to be running OK at the moment..

Re:Gaim...

[admbws]

I have just tried gaim. Disconnects immediately with the error, 'Protocol not supported'.

Re:Gaim...

[Stween]

You're probably running an old version of Gaim if you're getting that message.

MSN Protocol v9 has been supported for a version or two now.

I just tried my Gaim 0.70 here (haven't updated to 0.71 yet), and it works perfectly. And it's quite definately not the 15th any more :)

Re:Gaim...

[mrjb]

tried installing 0.71 and got an error 'Protocol MSN failed to load." -- This can be fixed by installing SSL support first, THEN running ./configure, make and make install. SSL support reportedly can be installed with apt-get install gnutls7-dev, good luck all!

Just upgrade

[colinleroy]

Ayttm (shameless plug) works. So does Gaim (AFAIK) (ok, it's here...) and most major open-source MSN clients (since a few weeks at least, they use the new protocol). The ban isn't really a ban, that's really mainly a security improvement.

Re:Just upgrade

[Tony Hoyle]

What's worse is it doesn't use SSL beyond the first couple of packets... I wrote a proxy for MSN6 (needed to block file transfers through the firewall) and was amazed to find that after the initial SSL negotiation to establish identity, the entire protocol is still plaintext... certainly made writing the proxy easier :)

IM now ... Mono Later ??

[MadX]

Is this not just a taste of things to come ??
Lock users into your service .. then force them to use your product exclusively ??

Don't know about anyone else .. but alarm bells should be sounding for other projects as M$ pull all their stuff closer to their chest ..

Re:IM now ... Mono Later ??

[danheskett]

Lock users into your service .. then force them to use your product exclusively ??

How can you blame them? MS provides the hardware, the bandwidth, and the assumes the risk of operating this chat network. I like my 3rd party client, but you know what? I leach from MS by using it. They have every right to restrict who can use their network and how. If they want to use technological measures to limit who can access the network, than fine, so be it. I'll use their product or a competeting protocol.

The main difference between this an Mono and inference is that letting 3rd party clients onto the MSN network costs MS real cash dollars each time a message is sent or received.

As long as IM service is free but centrlised, providers will try to lock out non-offical clients through whatever means are necessary.

Working for me

[phaze3000]

CenterICQ is working fine on MSN for me at present...

Miranda works!

[CoreyGH]

I'm using the MSN plugin that was included with Miranda IM version 0.3.1 I think that's the latest version. I have "Use MSN protocal v.8" checked in the options.

Re:Miranda works!

[RabidMonkey]

Miranda is the best 'alternate' im client I've used ... it's features are great, file transfers seem to work where ICQ *AND* MSNs wont (although I can't get ICQ to work through my companys firewall, but their go.icq.com client does, so I must be doing something wrong - anyone seen an ICQ firewall plugin like the msn one that does http tunnels?

I've gotten quite a few people to switch over, esp friends who ran both clients for years. Yes, it also supports Yahoo, but really, who uses yahoo?

I think the best feature is all the coolass plugins that work so seamlessly.

www.miranda-im.com

On a side note...

[zakezuke]

This is not directly attached to Messenger but rather their chat service.

Oct 14th was the day they decided to also nix their free chat service in favor of their charge people roughly $20 a year for it.

TK2CHATCHATA06 are 984 users and 45 invisible on 1 servers, this is roughly a 90% reduction from oct 13th.

Why I bring this up you ask. Well very simple, msn is shooting them selves in the foot really. Their chat service it's very much possible they wanted roughly 90% of their population to leave, heck it's easier to manage. But the policy on Messenger clients, well I can't imagine anything really good will come out of banning 3rd party clients. Your typical user won't notice anyway, where as your power user with multi-clients will make a stand and leave for other services that work.

But it looks good on paper, I imagine that's their pressent mission is with both Messenger and chat, making a good case for the shareholders why such services are money markers.

Trillian 2.0...

[SlashChick]

...works fine with MSN as of now.

Anyone using an earlier version should upgrade to 2.0 to fix any MSN imcompatibilities.

They have not "kickbanned 3rd-party clients"

[grahamlee]

What happened was that yesterday, the older MSNP8 protocol for accessing the MSN Messenger Network was discontinued; only clients capable of the new MSNP9 protocol can now connect.
MSNP9 is actually better than the previous protocol (as well as incompatible :-( but you can't have everything) because it negotiates via the Secure Sockets Layer; i.e. your IMs are encrypted with a strong algorithm and cannot easily be read by people with NICs in promiscuous mode on your network hardware.

There already exist third-party clients that can make use of this newer MSNP9 system; if your client does not then maybe it's worth (i)switching, (ii)asking the maintainers to add support, (iii)grabbing the source and doing it yourself you lazy wossname! However, Trillian frmo Cerulean Studios apparently does the business. I am currently connected to the MSN Network by Al's MSN; you must use at least v0.83 in order to connect.

Re:They have not "kickbanned 3rd-party clients"

[tunah]

i.e. your IMs are encrypted with a strong algorithm and cannot easily be read by people with NICs in promiscuous mode on your network hardware.

Actually, the IM part of the protocol has changed very little (at all?). What's changed is the login procedure. Previously, the server would send you a token, you would append your password and send them the MD5 hash. Now, the messenger server gives you some tokens, and you log onto passport, passing these on to the server. The passport logon uses HTTP with SSL, so your password is encrypted. The login process gives you the single-sign-in cookies (which unofficial clients ignore) and an authentication string to send back to the messenger server.

It seemed to me that the login process was slower with MSN 6, I guess this is why - it requires about four HTTPS requests. (They optimised the contact list download protocol to reduce this slowdown).

Grrrr

[thrill12]

I wish I could say:
what do we care, we just use any of the other IM's out there...

But then I think of the people I know that use MSN without protest, who have no problems with their connection, people who use MSN Messenger.
People I do not dislike for that fact: they know not better. Now the foul sword of Bill cuts the one link we had to try and gain a symbiosis between our species.

What now?
Shall we cease our diplomacy and switch over to the other IM?
Shall we resist our attempts to keep ourselves free and mindlessly implement the twisted program that is called MSN Messenger? The thought alone strikes fear in me!

I take the one and only possible step: resist the urge for getting together online:
I will simply use the phone.

What is the sound of one knee jerking?

[TCaM]

Ok maybe a few thousand knees.

Seriously they announced this a while back as a PROTOCOL upgrade, they are locking out all older protocol versions, including I would assume ancient versions of their own messenger.

Update your software people.

Re:aMSN

[alok_naik]

aMSN rocks ! Pretty much platform independent and no compiling required. I was using it on Solaris earlier and now on FreeBSD.

Re:What is IM?

[veeoh]

oh please - where have you been? Leave the server room for a while dude.