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AOL Is Cutting Off Third-Party App Access To AIM (9to5mac.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: AOL announced today that it is starting to cut off third-party app access to its Instant Messenger service. As first noticed by ArsTechnica, AOL began notifying users of at least one third-party app, Adium, that it would become obsolete starting on March 28th. At this point, it's unclear whether or not all third-party applications will be rendered useless come March 28th, but the message presented to Adium users seemed to strongly imply that: "Hello. Effective 3/28, we will no longer support connections to the AIM network via this method. If you wish to use the free consumer AIM product, we invite you to visit http://www.aim.com/ for more information." What this likely means is that AOL is shutting down the OSCAR chat protocol that is used to handle AIM messages. The service will, however, continue to be available via AOL's own chat app that is supported on macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android.
I can't remember the last time I saw anyone use AOL much less AIM. Got to be over a decade ago...
Does anyone still use that, I seriously thought it went away like MSN and Yahoo Messenger.
Seriously... That mongrel still lives on ?
Nuke it from orbit, the only way to be sure...
It's either AD revenue, or government monitoring behind this one. There's no reason to not support a third party client otherwise. Especially when the client already exists. (Time and money to change the protocol implementation for what? Some cat and mouse game that the third party will win given enough time?)
AOL began notifying users of at least one third-party app, Adium, that it would become obsolete starting on March 28th.
It might've been more efficient to personally notify the last 6 users.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I still have a handful of friends who haven't transitioned to xmpp or another system in pidgin.
Apple's iChat uses (used?) OSCAR/AIM for chat and initiating video conferencing. I'm not sure if that's still the case, as they've been through several major changes more recently. (to messages and facetime apps)
Anyone have more information on this?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Most people use Telegram and Discord now, both of which bury AIM in userbase and features. Just quit using AIM, it's a relic of another age.
Genuinely asking.
For the western world it seems like everybody is on Skype or Kik or Facebook IM, with outliers or niche communities on a variety of other protocols, plus region specific alternatives for China/Russia/etc.
I'm sure all 7 of the affected users still using AOL will be very sad.
It looks quite dead for at least two years. Even downloading "extras" is broken. Too bad, it's a pretty nice application but I guess the devs have moved on..
even from/to clearnet from Tor/I2P. In that regard it has succeeded.
On the OTHER hand, the federated XMPP services available are all niche offerings now. The majority don't have conference servers running (meaning most people go to another IM service/social network, or back to IRC for realtime group messaging.
The only major conference server as far as channels goes is jabber.org (or xmpp.net? I forget.) however the majority of the channels are dead/empty, and the room listing doesn't provide user quantities for channels, so finding a channel that isn't dead among the tens of thousands which ARE is exceedingly difficult. And yes there really are thousands to tens of thousands of channels up there. Many in non-english languages. It seems that despite using coming from servers all over the internet, the channel usage mostly congregated around that one server. Which thanks to Cisco's purchase and dismantling of jabber/xmpp has left it essentially dead.
Don't get me wrong, I used it quite a lot a decade ago. But anymore these days, it was basically only still on my system because it's pretty trivial to paste the username and password into Pidgin.
I guess Pidgin will just be for my ever-dwindling list of XMPP services, now.
what takes the role of IM today? Is it Facebook? Facebook messager? Phone text messaging? IRC? email? twitter?
...but I would like to thank them for reminding me about Adium as I still use Jabber/Google.
And what is the one Linux user of AIM supposed to do come March 28?
I put Adium in the Dock of all the Macs that I tend to at work. I will not remove Adium because it supports other protocols like XMPP. I will not install a separate AIM app because in removing OSCAR, AOL is admitting that AIM is a futile exercise.
--- Andy West http://andywest.org
They want their thing that anyone would care about back.
The TOC2 protocol is the official third party protocol to talk with AIM. OSCAR is the official protocol used by the AIM client, which has never officially been supported by use for third parties. Are they shutting down TOC2, or are they just blocking clients using OSCAR?
It sounds like they are just blocking OSCAR clients... third party apps can still connect via TOC2, which has always been the official method. It sounds like Ars and friends don't know what they're talking about and couldn't be assed to do a little research.
This is bound to upset AIM's remaining users: both of them.
How ya like dat?
CNN fakenews (banned from the whitehouse by our president owns arseholetechnica) Ars minions must downmod hide this. Demons wither if exposed to sunlight and they can't have it.
No more reason for me to use AOL. Please come and take all your floppy disks back.
Have gnu, will travel.
That is, all they are announcing is that they are discontinuing some protocol, not that they are discontinuing support for all third party clients.
The headline is typical of the fake news outrage machine: "Some people in group X are affected by Y" turns into "People in group X are affected by Y", which then morphs into "Y decides to screw over everybody in group X because Y is evil!"
A beginning is a very delicate time. Know then, that is is the year 1997. The known universe is ruled by the Padishah Emperor Bill Gates, my father. In this time, the most precious substance in the universe is code. The code extends life. The code expands consciousness. The code is vital to the internet. The Microsoft Corporation and its engineers, who the code has mutated over 22 years, use the code, which gives them the ability to dominate the market place. That is, rule the mindshare without moving. Because the Microsoft Corporation controls the default operating system, they are the highest power in the Universe. The Code also plays a very secret role in the Open Source community, of which I am a part. The open source community has been interfering with the proprietary code, and the corporations producing it thereof, of the great Internet of the Universe, cleverly replacing proprietary code with open source to form the FOSS, a super being. They plan to control this super being and use its powers for their own purposes. The coding plan has been carried out in a strict manner since the GNU project in 1984. The goal of the super being is in sight. But now, so close to the prize, a crazy student, Linus, the bound debtor of the University of Helsinki, who has been ordered to bear only proprietary code, has given birth to a kernal. Oh, yes. I forgot to tell you. The code exists all over the entire Internet. Hidden away within the rocks of this vast network are a people known as the Free Software Foundation, who have long held a prophecy that a man would come, a messiah, who would lead them to true freedom. The URL is https://www.fsf.org/, also known as FSF.
My friends and I have been using AIM for about 20 years. I'm not adverse to trying out a new chat protocol, but why should we? What benefits do the new chats have that are worth convincing people to change to?
While mainstream consumers have long since moved on from AIM commodities traders still rely on it as their primary IM client between brokers. And since trading falls under the purview of the Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) legislation must be recorded. Although AIM has a conversation history feature it cannot be centrally administrated. This has led to a third party IM recording industry. If this change cuts off these third parties access to the server then traders will not be allowed to use AIM and there will be a scramble to find an alternative. Since Intercontinental Exchange's ICE chat already communicates with AIM servers many firms have moved to it. But this might also affect ICE chat's ability to connect to AIM servers.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
AOL is doing no such thing. The whole thing is false.
Here are the facts that I know:
On Sept. 21st, the Tech Director of Product Management and Support of the AIM Platform reached out via the Pidgin mailing list, advising that there will be a breaking change in the way AIM handles client logins. This was done specifically to ensure a smooth transition to the new login method. He then worked with Pidgin developers to provide an alternative.
Pidgin 2.12, due to be released in a week or so, will support the new authentication method. Since Adium uses the same communication library, I believe it will also support it. I do not know if Trillian, Miranda and other other 3rd-party clients will make the change.
What is happening is that AOL is alerting its users that the "old" login method will be obsoleted in a month and that they should either upgrade their client or switch to another one in order to keep using the service.
<rant> I remember the times when /. was more about facts and informed discussion than clickbait and knee-jerk tirades. Damn, I feel old. </rant>
AIM is still being used by some utilities to initiate power trading. Archiving companies such as Smarsh won't be able to support this product if they rely on OSCAR to broker the connection. Archiving these conversations is necessary for legal reasons in case of a dispute between utilities. Other Instant Message methods are also supported by Smarsh, such as via ICE (InterContinental Exchange) Instant Messaging, which is where utilities will most likely migrate to if AIM really does kill all third-party access.
Smarsh IM Archiving
ICE Instant Messaging
The notification have also been coming in on Pidgin. I heard someone say that AOL is changing he authenitication mechanism (not at all improbable), and that Pidgin will update the ode to handle the new mechanism . I am guessing they are upgrading to stronger encryption mechanisms. So if this is true Pidgin will keep on working with the new Pidgin release.
AIM and Pidgin is still useful, still very reliable way to communicate and still is nice to be able to use a native client on the desktop rather than have to use a web client.
Hopefully pidgin will include OTR by defualt soon which would provide end to end encyrption on by default, because things have been a little stagnant lately
Back in the day (2014), this was mandatory geek reading:
David Auerbach: Chat Wars
I thought that AOL died when they stopped selling desktops that read floppy disks? Now I feel like I've been in the woods past 19 years.
I am going to post on my frienster and livejournal about how much it sucks, might even make it a headline on my angelfire page.
I've also read that Pidgin will be updated. Here's hoping! Our family has been using it for years and still use it daily. I prefer keyboard typing vs phone texts any day and like that I can go back and check an older chat log when looking for a shared link/information. I've tried other programs but do not like the ads and/or interface. The simplicity of this program goes a long way!