AIM

From IndieWeb


AIM is AOL Instant Messenger, a messaging silo that was discontinued on 2017-12-15.

How to export your data

(this section is a stub!)

AIM has two sets of data you may want to export:

  • buddy list - your AIM contacts
  • chat logs - history of all your conversations on AIM

How to export your buddy list

According to https://help.aol.com/articles/aim-discontinued,

Can I save my Buddy List?

Unfortunately you are not able to save or export your Buddy List.

However there may be open source ways to do so using existing AIM clients.

Try web searching for "AIM buddy list export" and seeing if anything works for you.

Exporting tools:

How to export your chat logs

See https://help.aol.com/articles/aim-discontinued for details on how to export your chat logs, and please copy any simple steps here below that you found worked for you!


Issues

Third-Party Access

Third-party clients connecting to AIM started to receive the message "Hello. Effective 3/28, we will no longer support connections to the AIM network via this method. If you wish to use the free consumer AIM product, we invite you to visit www.aim.com for more information."

The issue appears to actually be that the MD5 hash function for authentication is being pulled and some third-party clients rely on that currently. If the third-party clients update their authentication methods, they can still connect to AIM.

2017-02-28 Cyrus Farivar: AOL will cut off older third-party app access to AIM


See Also