March 13, 2005

AOL Changes AIM TOS, 0wn Users

AIM Terms of Service via Slashdot, Metafilter, etc.

Ech. AIM, the provider of both AIM and iChat's services, changed their terms of service so that they own anything sent over their network. It's more inconvenient than problematic; now I won't use AIM, but there's a ton of other services. So what's the point of doing this? Frankly, I'm astonished; it's like an airline saying they'll only take people and not luggage. For Mac OS X, try Fire.app, or Proteus. Both support iChat Rendezvous for local chatting, and Fire definitely supports AOL encryption, and both support alternate chat methods. For Windows, Trillian is tops, and supports a ton of options including encryption and direct Trillian-to-Trillian chat.

Sidenote: you know you're getting older when you ask yourself if using "0wn" will make you look like a geezer trying to be "with it". Posted by Ted Stevko at March 13, 2005 11:45 PM

Comments