Are my Instant Messaging conversations private?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

To be fair, that is the exact same ToS that every online publisher has.

They need to have all those legal terms to publish your content.

In other words, since your content is YOUR content, you need to approve AOL's publishing YOUR content on THEIR web site.

The same thing happened with MSN spaces, and again it was a tempest in a teacup.

Here's more info from Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/aim.asp

I don't know if it's the EXACT same wording. The AIM TOS was very ambiguous, and could, in fact, be interpreted to mean all your *private* IM's are their's for the having. As it turns out, because of the ruckus, they plan to clarify their TOS soon.

Is the same true for MSN Instant Messenger? That is, can someone be reading your conversation while you don't know they are there? "Hack" into the conversation?

Well, this article covered AOL's Terms Of Service ... and AOL's explicitly said that *they* could read and republish your IM conversations at will. They've since clarified their terms of service.

Microsoft's TOS are different, I believe.

But to answer you question about "hacking", which is something else ... yes, of course, it's possible, though difficult, to hack and listen in on an IM conversation. It depends on many MANY things, but possible? Yes.

Thank you, Leo. I've been using MSN IM at work and I'm concerned that someone in our IS department could hack into my conversations. How difficult is it? How much effort would they have to put into doing it?

Like I said, it depends on many things, so it's hard to say just how hard it would be.

Leo - I am a user of AIM at home and I want to archive my instant messages, but can't figure out how to turn on the archival feature. Can you tell me how?

hey, my names gabrielle, im a hacker. i HAVE hacked into friends instant messages, and its not as hard as people make it sound. the easiest way is if you get a a computer (at the library, at school, at your home) that the person has ben on. all you have to do is download. im ion my frens screen names all the time. so yes, it is possible, and sometimes VERY easy. ne ?s, just im me on a screen name ive ben using 2 tok 2 people hoo want 2 no more. its amandababy999, its on aol, neway, l8r yall!!!

IMO: that's not hacking, that's just taking advantage of someone's carelessness. But yes, public or shared computers are a HUGE risk for your privacy, and as you can see from the previous poster, easy pickin's if you're not careful.

HOW DO U HACK AIM CONVERSATIONS?

To post a comment on "Are my Instant Messaging conversations private?", please return to that article's main page.