Slashdot Mirror
AOL Locks Out AIM Screen Names
dshaw858 writes "According to a story on eWeek, AOL has mistakenly suspended a very large number of AOL Instant Messenger (one of the most widely used IM programs) accounts, by mistake. I don't know about you guys, but this happened to me and a large percentage of friends and coworkers. AOL says that a fix should be ready by Monday."
I can vouch that this was indeed the case. Two of the handful of screenames I use on a regular basis were being punted at stage two of the sign in with an error about the account being suspended.
The box had a little "More Info" button that I clicked on that was supposed to explain why my account had been suspended. Two of them had to do with actual AOL accounts (mine are AIM only), the third had to do with being less than 13 (I can buy beer), and the last was a "you violated the TOS" option.
Dunno what happended, but as of last night, all of my screen namers were back up and running. The disconnections seemed to have no relation to the e-mail address they were registered to or when the last time I used them was.
*shrug*
Please for the love of God look into Gaim. Far less bloated, no ads, and it just plain works.
I have different experiences. All of my friends, and pretty much everyone I'm aware of at my university uses AIM, and we're all 22 or under.
I haven't met anyone who uses ICQ in years, although I hear it's more popular outside of the US.
I can't comment on the growing MSN population though. I always forget to ask that when I lure children into my van with promises of free candy and ice cream.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
That's precisely when I switched to using Trillian as a client and, more recently, Gaim since switching to Linux.
Most of my contacts were ICQ, but I had a few on MSN and a couple on AIM. Trillian or Gaim meant that I could have one program open yet be on multiple networks, meaning I could communicate with all of them.
The distribution's a bit different now, as most of my contacts are on MSN, but it's still useful because of this. If I meet someone new on one of the other networks I'm not out of contact simply because I mainly use another.
Sure if one of the networks dies (or folds totally) it'd still bite for that network, but can still access the others. Plus I can build up a list of contacts on a different network without having to move away from the current one.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
Personally, all my contacts use ICQ (geeks and non-geeks alike).
you know that aim and icq are connected right? as long as you're using vaguely recent clients for icq and aim, then clients on each can speak to the other easily, and appear on buddy lists etc.
I use ichat and have both aim and icq accounts on my buddylist.
FYI. in ichat, to enter in icq buddies, you simple put them in your address book, add a new aim account to that person and put their icq number in it. then use ichat to add that person as a new buddy.
dave