Just when you thought it was safe to use
GAIM again...
I got this nice little message from AOL a few minutes ago.
(11:28:08) AOL Instant Messenger: You have been disconnected from the AOL Instant Message Service (SM) for accessing the AOL network using unauthorized software. You can download a FREE, fully featured, and authorized client, here http://www.aol.com/aim/download2.html .
(You
dirty,
long-haired linux hippie software pirate!)
You might have heard about
AOL's new way of keeping
Jabber users off the
AIM network. Official AIM clients can send an
md5sum of arbitrary parts of
aim.exe as part of the
OSCAR protocol signon process.
GAIM and
Jabber can't authenticate against this, and get kicked off after a few minutes. As long as the
TOC protocol still works, I can still use GAIM, but with fewer cool features. All AIM traffic is carried over AOL's servers, so they I would say they should have the right to control who uses their resources,
EXCEPT opening the AIM network to other clients was a condition of the
AOL - Time Warner merger! I guess AOL just got sick of Microsoft's hogging the anti-trust lawsuit spotlight.
I have been notified by
tftv256 that the newest version of
GAIM can use oscar using a hard-coded checksum, at least until AOL changes the checksum again.