AOL Selling AIM Gateway/Listener To Employers 326
PizzaFace writes "After pushing free instant messaging to more than 100,000,000 users, AOL is now selling AIM-monitoring software to businesses that want to monitor and control the messaging of their employees. AIM Enterprise Gateway will reportedly sell for about $35/employee/year."
Yet another reason to use Trillian (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yet another reason to use Trillian (Score:4, Insightful)
Ray
Re:Yet another reason to use Trillian (Score:5, Funny)
"Hey boss, Karen in Accounts sent out 54 megs of messages last month"
"What were they about?"
"Dunno, they were all just squiggly characters"
"Ok, well lets just assume its work related. After all, like all other companies, we use pokey messaging software to talk to clients. Let me know when it looks like she's wasting my time and money."
Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole point of this system is not to determine whether employees are using lots of IM. It's to insure that employees aren't using IM services for "inappropriate" purposes such as cybersex, or to give away sensitive information. (Or both, as the case my be.)
Incidentally, if I had my employees using IM for intra-company communications I would damn well want them encrypting their communications. Do you really want company data going through some untrusted external server? If I didn't want my employees using IM at all, I'd just block the ports.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Funny)
53xx33Gur1 Are you touching yourself?
k0rp0r@73dR0n3 Oh yeah, baby
53xx33Gur1 Tell me something sexy, baby
k0rp0r@73dR0n3 Uh huh, we're expanding into the Korean peninsula FY 2004 and out 3rd quarter profits were up by 7.2 percent. I have a nine-inch cock.
But.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Underestimating AIM Users (Score:4, Funny)
I thought everyone knew that!
Re:Yet another reason to use Trillian (Score:2, Insightful)
Still, as far as I know Trillian does nothing to prevent a man-in-the-middle attack (no certificates, no way of knowing 'who' you're talking to.
The attack is especially easily performed in this situation when your employer has complete control of all gateways through which all your packages has to pass. (Assuming it is external clients you would be devulging their secrets to)
I see from their site that they are working on "More features and greater security enhancements" to come "soon", but at this moment I wouldn't trust the security of SecureIM too much
Re:Yet another reason to use Trillian (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yet another reason to use Trillian (Score:4, Insightful)
If I now just could convince everyone on my 100+ contactlist to change from icq to jabber...
Re:Yet another reason to use Trillian (Score:5, Interesting)
Odd thing is that the actual AOL announcement was actually about trolling out precisely this kind of service. The Washington post take on AOL's move is kinda wierd, employers can already monitor AIM use, what was announced was the encryption piece. The Wash post mentions this, but only mid way through:
Instead, AOL plans to offer private companies and federal agencies a premium version of the service early next year that will enable employees to send encrypted instant messages that can only be read by designated, registered recipients. America Online is developing the encrypted system in partnership with VeriSign Inc., an online security firm.
Why a big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
AOL is just catering for that market. I don't see anything insidious, evil, or otherwise overly noteworthy about this...
Ray
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now they come up with a solution designed to do exactly that? That bothers me.
(You can block access to AOL's login servers, or configure a proxy to block it, but that is not easy when they keep changing the protocol and servers. The fact that AIM operates over port 80 makes it even more difficult to block. MSN and ICQ are worse though because there are more servers to block and they can use almost any port.)
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:2)
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
They even made it so that they could be the only ones to kill it.
Brilliant! It makes me laugh out loud, what a wonderful move this is for AOL!
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
They even made it so that they could be the only ones to kill it.
Brilliant! It makes me laugh out loud, what a wonderful move this is for AOL!
This reminds me of the Telco telemarketer story on
So AOL gives away IM service, makes it impossible to block, but then sells a sniffer. What's next? They'll sell super-encrypted service for a fee to the user base, then a few years down the road, they'll sell an unencryption ad-on to the sniffer, then...
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:5, Funny)
Is it just me, or does that business plan sound familiar? [barnesandnoble.com]
As the old saying goes... (Score:5, Funny)
Soko
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not exactly a new business model - "get employees hooked on something for free that is a pain in the ass for businesses, then offer an expensive solution to fix it to the businesses."
Remember Pointcast? Early innovator of "push"? Gave away their news receiver/news screen saver and overwhelmed company T1 lines? They later came out with a sort of proxy system for business subscribers that allowed a single thread to be downloaded and then fed to the inside users.
Apparently they didn't sell enough of them. Pointcast as it was known is gone and now points to Infogate [pointcast.com], the acquirer of Pointcast technology (can we say 'assets only'?)
Then again, maybe there's something to this break it and offer a fix approach. Imagine IPOs of virus and trojan-writing entities with awesome virus protection scheme revenues. Or what if chinanet.cn (world class sponsorer of spam and intrusion attempts) offered a protection racket?
Internet Insurance, now there's a business model. From that perspective, AOL may have finally found a profitable model.
*scoove*
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:2)
You are exactly right. What's next, a Slashdot petition to ban Sun from including snoop with Solaris?
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
This sort of argument always goads me and I'll tell you why.
I was surfing around on my home PC last week and found an interesting application that could save me some time at work. I downloaded it, put it on a floppy disk, took it to work next day, installed it and saved myself 20 minutes work for the week. This was on my time; I would never have been surfing at work to find it. I have saved my boss two days work this year, and next year, the year after and so on.
Should I charge my boss for this? It doesn't really seem worth to me. It only took me a minute.
Should I complain that my work life is interfering with my home life because I sometimes think about the job even when I'm not there? I think he might laugh at me. This is the year 2002 and the boundaries, rightly or wrongly, between home and work are close.
If a company cannot trust its staff to make the odd instant message or personnel phone call then they probably are doomed. If they have the money to spend spying on staff like this then there is something terribly wrong with their attitude and I wouldn't want to work for them. If someone in the company is not pulling their weight because they are chatting all day then it will show - you don't need spying software for this.
It's about a bit of give and take. Not spying on conversations with the missus.
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Employers already monitor staff's email etc, why is this any different?
Ease off the throttle there, Captain Capitalist. A few points to discuss:
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why a big deal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Going to war using AIM? (Score:4, Funny)
Jeez, better off with RogerWilco than AIM to communicate on the battlefield
The emoticons are a plus on the battfield. (Score:5, Funny)
Solider5554: Sarge! We're under fire! We need help!
Sarge0034: Hang in there. You're doing a great job solider
Solider5554: Arrrghhh!!!! I've been hit!
Sarge0034: God, these whining soliders never know when to quit, that god they're dispensible.
Sarge0034: Oppsss. Wrong person sorry.
Solider5554: What!? I need a chopper. I'm losing a lot of blood over here. >:-@
Sarge0034 (warn 10%): Hey, just because you've warned me anonymously, doesn't mean I don't know it's you.
Sarge0034: brb *door slam* as sarge leaves
*door open* as sarge enters
Sarge0034: Sorry had to reboot, did I miss anything?
Solider324: uuuuhhhhhh I don't think I'm going to make it
other messaging programs (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:other messaging programs (Score:2, Funny)
Use a product from a giant evil corporation trying to get away from a giant evil corporation!
I'm sure M$ won't catch on to this stuff... *rolleyes*
I wouldn't be suprised if M$ already was monitoring your communications on msn...
Re:other messaging programs (Score:3, Funny)
In other news, corporate phone bills are on the rise.
Into the fire, you say? (Score:2)
Create the Drug, then the antidote... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Create the Drug, then the antidote... (Score:2)
And introducing AOL SUPER SNOOPER. Available to businesses, it's able to monitor even more IM communications, including employees who use AOL Snoop-blocker technology. Just $55/employee.
Re:Create the Drug, then the antidote... (Score:2)
[With memories of boss.el for Emacs...]
You'll want the more sophisticated AOL Boss Spoofer continuous stegonographic translation so that phrases like:
are only visible in the realm of approved keywords with gratifying cleartext likePrivacy = Bye Bye (Score:5, Funny)
"You Got Fired!"
Is it just me or... (Score:2, Informative)
This explains a lot (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This explains a lot (Score:5, Funny)
to hell with aol! (Score:2, Interesting)
With AOL owning AIM and ICQ.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:With AOL owning AIM and ICQ.. (Score:2)
2. ?
3. profit
You know, this could almost be funny if it wasn't retarded. You see, AOL actually has a very solid Step #2. Providing value add-on functionality and spyware/groupware to companies using AIM. Then profit.
1. Make stupid ass list
2. ?
3. Post on slashdot
Re:With AOL owning AIM and ICQ.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank god for GAIM (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thank god for GAIM (Score:2)
Encryption is your friend. (Score:2, Informative)
Whether or not they're usable, I don't know... I do intend to find out, though... Anyone have any experience with them?
Freshmeat search on gaim + encrypt [freshmeat.net]
Profit! (Score:2)
as long as I can keep looking at pr0n and playing atomica at work I have no problem with this.
IM is an ideal medium for public key encryption. (Score:5, Insightful)
The logic is like so:
1. I send a request to you to add you to my buddy list, like most IM clients do.
2. If you accept, your IM client automatically forwards me a public key tied to your IM handle.
3. If you add me as a 'buddy', then the previous is repated.
4. When I send you a message, my IM client automatically encrypts the message with your public key.
5. When you receive that messages, your IM client automatically decrypts with your private key.
This *should* work with all instant messengers with the possible exception of MSN Exchange messenger. The protocols are not that difficult to work with and third party IM clients have been doing it for quite a while. Let's see a PGP or GPG plugin for an IM client that will do this. Once we have plugins for all the major IM clients, you'll see this snowball quite a bit-- espcially from the people who IM while at work.
Re:IM is an ideal medium for public key encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
Read mah lips, public certification authority..
Re:IM is an ideal medium for public key encryption (Score:3, Insightful)
Seth
That won't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IM is an ideal medium for public key encryption (Score:2)
Actually, your public key exchange should also include a whole suite of symmetric encryption keys that you then use on all subsequent transactions. IMHO, public key encryption should be relied on as little as possible. I think there's a strong possibility it will be completely broken in 10 years due to quantum computing.
Per year? That's renting it ... (Score:4, Insightful)
There has been alot in the press recently about the need for brokers/financial counselors who have a statutory obligation to save all such messages. This is a tool for that.
I do find their plans for an encrypted IM tool to be interesting. It's always suprised me that something like this hasn't come up sooner, considering how extensively IM is used in business.
Re:Per year? That's renting it ... (Score:2)
Then there would be ALOT of shooting ... (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong, stupid, bad? Yes. Happening all over the place? Yes.
Re:Per year? That's renting it ... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is exactly the reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I can understand the arguments that the boss should be able to see what their employees are doing during work hours - but it can go WAY too far
IMHO, bosses should use productivity figures as the yardstick to measure how uhhh productive their employees are being
Not if they send a couple of non work related IM's a day
I guess one of the main problem is that you cannot secure IM's... emails can be encrypted at your computer and decrypted by the recipient, thus bypassing ur employers very long nose...
Theres no viable alternative which includes encryption for AIM (yes, some clients support encryption - but the vast majority do not)
Long live putty [greenend.org.uk] and ! [konst.org.ua]
Re:This is exactly the reason... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not if they send a couple of non work related IM's a day
One the one hand, yes. I agree. Bosses should really look at how much you get done, and use that as your measure of productivity. If you can code 100,000 lines a day and still chat on IM, more power to you.
But for most folks at most jobs, the measure of how many e-mails you send out and how much you use IM is probably a pretty good indicator of how much you're slacking off. I've worked across-the-cube-wall from several people who have astoundingly low productivity, and in most cases, they've been censured because someone noticed how many e-mails and IM's they send out. It shouldn't be the ONLY indicator used, but it's definitely a good one.
Now, to really know how much someone is slacking off, you'd need to look at the actual text of e-mail and IM's that get sent out... and that's a whole different privacy issue that I'm not really comfortable with.
Already done... (Score:5, Informative)
free. It's called aimsniff and it can work on it's own or take a snort log
file. Only problem with this sort of thing (both the free and the commercial
product) is that there is likely to be too much information to grab. You would
have to have some sort of keyword search or something. I wonder if 3l373
speak would have an effect.
SealBeater
Re:Already done... (Score:2, Informative)
-jfedor
No Problem... (Score:5, Informative)
Not surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
But there are ways to fight back. Trillian allows encrypted IM.
It would also be nice to have a nice open standard (Jabber comes to mind) which uses strong encryption by default. Maybe if we push for Jabber support in Trillian, more people would use it.
Another way is to attack AOL directly by cutting off this source or revenue? How? Well ironically by developing an open source and free version of the AIM spyware. I mean, the companies are going to try to spy anyway, we might as well make sure AOL can't profit from it in the process. A rather interesting way to punish AOL for their actions. We lose either way so we might as well take AOL down with us.
The way to win of course, is to push an open source strong encrypted IM and market it as much as possible as being bug (the spying type) free.
OMG!!! (Score:5, Funny)
What is going to happen to us now? First Microsoft wins the day in court, and now this... The world truly is going to heck in a handbasket.
(all of this with tongue firmly in cheek...)
Reasons why this is a bad thing (Score:4, Insightful)
For those out there who wonder why this is a bad thing, as yourself.
1) How would you feel if your employer started recording conversations at the water cooler or in the smoking lounge ( insert place where employees congrigate ).
2) IM != Email since people believe that IM is a transient way of "chatting" and not a e-mail where it get stored and cataloged on both yours and their PC.
3) Without informing the employees this could very easly breach electronic privacy laws in many countries.
I have no problem with informed consent monitoring, but blanket monitoring does not halp anyone. It gives managers a sense of control where they are basing evaluations on information that may or may not have anything to do with performace. Employees if informed will have a reduced moral since they will even further feel like sheep. If not informed employees, once they find out, will fell violated because of above mentioned "chat" or transatory nature of the conversations that normally take place.
I still say that for the majority of comanies should spend their money on benifits and good managers, this is just another dumb idea.
Re:Reasons why this is a bad thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? (Score:4, Interesting)
And on the flip side, people already have been snooping on AIM conversations through the regular sniffing tools that come with any standard linux distribution.
But! If you make it official that you will remain in control of your protocol instead of opening it up, and roll your own equivalent tools up, and sell them at a decent price, then they will bite. I agree.
However, at 35 bucks a head a year at a large company, I'd be tempted to just have the employees use a stock client distribution with/without encryption abilities and hire a technie to take care of the snooping if I care to do that. Or just ditch AOL and use one of those others ones like jabber with all the same abilites.
But hey, sometimes you just get that knack to spend your corporate money you know?
jabber (Score:2)
Add Campaign (Score:2, Funny)
Think you have some slackers around the office spending all their time chatting online, spilling the beans about your financials, or just bad-mouthing the CEO? Take AIM and blow them away with our instant message monitoring software!
More Secure? (Score:3, Interesting)
How, under any definition of security does this make it more secure?
side note: does slashdot seem very slow to anyone else today?
Re:More Secure? (Score:2, Funny)
I just use a script on the firewall box (Score:2, Interesting)
I only do this when directed by management, for bandwidth reasons, but it's nice to know that I'm doing my part to save marriages and relationships.
But if you want to line the pockets of AOL/Time-Warner, go right ahead.
Jabber's a cheaper way of doing this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Company runs its own Jabber server. Everyone there has a user@yourcompany.com address. Internal messages between folks in the company never go outside. Admins who want to do monitoring or whatever can do that. Users who want interoperability with AIM or whatever can do that -- *if* the admins decide to install the AIM connector on the server. And it sure doesn't cost $35/seat.
Insert Subject Here (Score:5, Funny)
My managers are reading my e-mail
My managers are reading my IMs
My managers are monitoring what candy I get from the vending machine
You know for someone who is supposed to be in charge of managing a department/whatever, has work (or should have) of their own to do, he's taking a really big interest in what I'm doing back here.
Re:Insert Subject Here (Score:4, Funny)
I hope it's not too late (Score:2)
From my company's employee handbook... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is plenty of other text that details this, but that's the meat of it. Companies have a right to monitor any traffic to protect their interests. If you don't want your AOL messages watched, find a company that supports employee privacy on company equipment over covering its own ass. Good luck, because I've never heard of one.
I think it's kind of shady on AOL's part to suddenly roll over on its user base. However, there are a lot companies that don't allow IM because it's more difficult to keep an eye on than email. AOL may benefit from more acceptance as a result of this move.
Re:From my company's employee handbook... (Score:3, Interesting)
My previous career was as a legal secretary.
One very nice thing about that job was that you could very safely assume that you had privacy while working, using the equipment, phones, faxes, etc. Reason? EVERYTHING you touch has Attorney-Client privilege and is either employee- or company- confidential. Anyone who is not supposed to be privy to your data, communication, files, etc., would be putting the company at risk by snooping, and no-one, not an IT manager, not the president, has authority that supersedes an attorney's requirement for privacy.
So, if you work anywhere in the legal field, you won't have to put up with this kind of thing (routine transcripts of your commo without clear accountability at every step.)
Secure IM for government? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is certainly at least a little bit of an exaggeration. You can't put classified information on any system that has any kind of communications software or hardware on it. You have to physically disconnect all connections before starting in classified mode. The only exception is machines on a network that has only classified systems and uses some form of secure line for transport between the nodes in the network. There are only a handful of such networks, and you won't have one on your desk. There will most likely be only a few such machines per facility.
There already is a system for the transmission of classified data between different personnel in the government. It's called, to use technical terms, the "secure telephone." For documents, you can use a technology called the "courier" - an organic system that has advanced intelligence functions and is capable of defense through the use of an integrated firearm.
Much of the unclassified stuff is transmitted in the same way as classified information. There are also secure networks that are used for the transmission of unclassified but sensitive information.
If it's anything that requires encryption, it will be transmitted over a secure network, or will be handled through other procedures. This IM system really has no application to the military or intelligence communities.
Quick Fix (Score:2)
Yeah. the game was great! The beer girl
Not so expensive && Slashdot is SLOWWWWWWW (Score:3, Informative)
P.S. Rob, Nate, Jeff, your change of hosting service this week from Exodus East to Exodus West has made Slashdot incredibly s...l.........o...........w....... from Europe. It's taking 2 minutes to load a page compared to 10 seconds on the old host. Did OSDN pull the plug on your funding for the larger pipe at Exodus East? It's understandable but a shame nonetheless because it's going to stop people visiting.
Re:Not so expensive && Slashdot is SLOWWWW (Score:2)
Here's one (Score:2)
Try firing him... (Score:2)
aol is NOT monitoring aim (Score:5, Informative)
Several of my friends work for IBM, and they have been using something like this software, called Sametime, for a couple years. Sametime may have been a beta of this product.
jf
Simple solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
[Disclaimer: I work for myself so have no stake in this; however I do use AIM for groupthink with other folks.]
The trouble with this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Who by definition are the worst offenders.
And because they're all buddies, they "bypass" the monitoring for their own IP addresses.
Total waste of time.
PLAC (Score:2, Interesting)
I work at a college, and the network admin here wanted to try out this mini-distro called PLAC [freshmeat.net] for Portable Linux Auditing CD. Basically it's supposed to be small enough to be burned onto one of those business card sized CD's, and they're bootable. So basically you can pop it into a CD drive and boot a machine to this auditing software. Well, since he wanted to try it out, we setup a small box just inside the firewall here to see what it could find. Well... to be honest, it found a lot. It could grab URL's that people were looking at, emails that they were sending out, and yes, even AIM messages.
The amazing thing is that it would sniff the network packets, but yet report everything in a simple, easily-readable format. It's amazing how much private stuff on the internet isn't private.
This makes me appreciate licq [licq.org] with an SSL connection even more.
Whose security? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is allowing someone else to monitor my communications more secure?
Just keep in mind who the customer is. In the mass market, the customer is rarely the user.
marketing.... (Score:5, Funny)
What a great way... (Score:5, Interesting)
In April 2001, AOL filed a motion to quash Nam Tai's subpoena, arguing it should not be required to reveal subscriber information because it would "infringe on the well-established First Amendment right to speak anonymously."
IM and security issues (Score:2, Interesting)
The company I work for uses ICQcorp, which, AFAIK, is dead software and has sat in beta since it was released in 1999.
Now I won't get into most problems our company has had with instant messenging (the second biggest being users abusing their broadcasting rights), but I will dwelve on one...
ICQcorp is terribly insecure... well, at least the way it was implemented in our office environment. In my department, most people don't have a workstation they can call their own. When you get in, you pick an NT box, log in, and that's that. The problem is that anyone who used that particular box (and logged into ICQ) can have their history of messages viewed easily. The *.dat files can be opened through notepad, and sit locally on the C: drive in the ICQcorp folder. Albeit, the formatting is bad, but you can definitely read it. Since I've discovered this, I've really toned down my instant messenging to the point where it is pretty much all work related, and if I actually remember to do it, I'll delete my own
I just recieved a response back from LAN support and it wasn't very encouraging:
" There are no other departments
I think it's time I maybe had a chat with Corporate Security. Do you guys agree?
P.S.
On a totally unrelated note... anyone else experience unbelievable slowness with
Did NO ONE look at what this is? (Score:5, Informative)
It's a way to run your OWN aim gateway server at your business.
So I am at franks widgets (fwidg). I install the gateway server. Everyone at fwidg logs into the company aim server instead of the official AIM server, as employee@fwidg.com.
So now we have intranet messaging, and apparently others can add us to the contact list as well (outsiders).
OBVIOUSLY since all communication is going through this server, they can log/etc it. But htis is not some sort of magical firewall dropin that listens to aim conversations... there's been opensource projects that can do that for years now.
It looks to me like it's aiming at the jabber and MSN/exchange messenger market. It's a locally hosted central server, so your business stuff isn't going out over the internet, and it authenticates against stuff you already have, according to their marketing. I'd guess that means ldap and active-directory.
Why would I want to see what AOLers are saying? (Score:3, Funny)
hpyrabbit1981: Ya! LOL!
dlscowboys0101: hi rabbit how r u?
tina23992: me 2!
hpyrabbit1981: @->-- cowbyos
memphisflowershop2: me too! a/s/l?
I don't want that. I let the AOLers have their little messenger and chat rooms and they can crap all over it as much as they want. I much prefer slashdot, where frist porst's and goatse.cx reign supreme!
Is AIM comparable to a virus? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure that AOL did not have that in mind* when they first developed AIM but I can't believe that they are not relishing the opportunity to generate even more cash from the monster they created.
*Or am I not being paranoid enough?
I'd rather fall off Ilustrada than ride any other horse
This is a good product. (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Gives security conscious corporations a reason to allow AIM rather than ban it (not so long ago, I seem to remember, the AIM client had a security hole. Wasn't that '99?)
2. Allows companies to unify their methods of IMing, a product which is actually a really good business tool. If you're on a conference call, phone call, in a meeting...there are lots of times it's great to have a live medium to communicate with a coworker. Easier than remembering Joe down at helpdesk is B1gP3n1s.
3. The CYAN (Cover your ass network). Hey, I know that you don't have to worry about this when you're down at the bar putting the moves on the blonde, but do that at work and it's all of a sudden the company's liability. Of course, you could lose your job. But they could lose money and time too. Don't forget, not every company out there is a big evil CORPORATION.
Those are three fine reasons. Hey, we don't open up the firewall and have mail delivered to a server on every desktop, why do the same with IM? It's a logical way to start partitioning off Instant Messaging, rather than having massive servers off somewhere else handling messages. And in a lot of cases, companies are leery about plaintext running around the web with potential trade secrets. It's silly, when it could route locally.
I'm not saying that AOL's solution is the one and only, but the idea is a good one. For the same reason we use mail servers, file servers, PBX systems, it makes sense. With companies convinced that IM is necessary for productivity, it opens the doors for other solutions, non proprietary in nature. And it opens the demands for secure features to be built into clients. Hey, somebody's gotta pay the bills, right? And we know that it won't be AOL people dialling up...
Brilliant (Score:3, Interesting)
Who ever thought that one up gets 2 points..
10 years ago it would have been called a fraud.. but in todays world....
My solution to AIM monitoring... (Score:5, Informative)
If you would like to check out the beta version, it's available at http://www.vonnieda.org/SecureIM [vonnieda.org]
The program will be getting a name change before v1.0 since there are several SecureIMs out there.
Before you flame me about security or what not, please at least have a read of the Readme.txt [vonnieda.org] file where I think I explain pretty well what SecureIM is and isn't capable of.
I hope someone finds some use of it. Enjoy
This isn't all about employers snooping (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Use Public key encryption (Score:4, Insightful)