MSN/HOTMAIL problem

[David Woolley]

On 15/11/14 12:30, Thérèse LAPORTE wrote:

> I'm not sure to understand well ! I must wait for 2.10.11 version.
> Before last Monday, my msn contact list was connected. It disappeared
> since few days.

Microsoft changed the service at that time.

If you read the terms of use for MSN, they say you may only use it with 
an approved client.  Microsoft have never approved the use of any open 
source clients, so Pidgin is not an approved client.  This is enforced 
by the clients identifying themselves to the service, which is checked 
by the server.  As an unsupported client, Microsoft has never given 
Pidgin an identifier.

To get round this, Pidgin uses the identifier belonging to an old 
Microsoft supplied client.

Although this is a breach of the terms of service, Microsoft have never 
bothered to pursue this.  However that version of the Microsoft client 
belongs to a version of Windows for which all support has ceased, and 
Microsoft has just removed its permission to access MSN.

Basically, if you do things that are against Microsoft's terms of 
service, or use end of life Microsoft products, you do so at your own risk.

Although in the short term, changing Pidgin to pretend to be a later 
Microsoft product will get round the block, Microsoft's policy, for some 
time, has been to replace MSN by Skype, except in China, where the 
encryption in Skype is unacceptable.  There have been various dates 
given for the withdrawal of MSN and several of them have passed, but 
there will come a time when Microsoft finally turn it off.

Unfortunately, as running an IM service costs money and open source 
clients can defeat the use of advertising to supply that money, if you 
want an IM service that is going to work reliably, in the long term, 
with open source clients, you will need to pay for the service.  I'm not 
sure that there really are any such services with enough users to be 
attractive to most people, but if you are using IM for business 
purposes, you should run your own, private, server.

> I updated my Pidgin from old version to 2.10.9. two weeks ago.

2.10.10 was announced on October 22nd, so it has been the current 
version for more than two weeks.

Because Pidgin is not supported by MSN, Microsoft were under no 
obligation to tell its developers that they were going to change the 
service in a way that would break it.