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MSN censors your messages

Posted on 7/8/2007, 3:07 am, by Colin Charles, under General.

Its probably my fault for using MSN (Microsoft Messenger), but it seems to be most prominent among a lot of users I know. Thank goodness gaimPidgin supports the protocol just fine.

My recent usage of Facebook has wanted me to drop people profile information, via MSN. I somehow get a stupid message: “Message could not be sent because a connection error occurred:“. If you’re in a chat, you get disconnected from the chat, so you need to be re-invited.

It seems that in Microsoft’s infinite wisdom, they’re doing server side filtering, and killing your messages as they fit if they match an expression. Blocking popular items like:

  • .info – yes, this includes all domains that have .info in them, which is really, silly
  • profile.php? – good bye to sending Facebook profiles via MSN
  • download.php?
  • gallery.php

A more comprehensive list is being kept at the Adium (pidgin for OS X) wiki, at MSNCensorship. They also blogged it. I’m discouraging all my friends I talk with regularly from using MSN and moving to more sensible services.

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  • http://trodrigues.net/fragility Tiago Rodrigues

    I had heard about this before. I just didn’t knew they blocked so many stuff. Maybe that explains some things…

    A tip: use tinyurl when you want to give addresses to people :)

  • http://www.bytebot.net/ byte

    Yeah, it seems like thats the other option, tinyurl. But I shouldn’t have to go thru an extra hoop just to send messages. msn seems evil

  • http://trodrigues.net/fragility Tiago Rodrigues

    It IS evil ;)

  • http://lesterchan.net/blogs/2007/08/09/msn-censors-your-messages/ Lester Chan’s Website

    MSN Censors Your Messages

    If you get this error when on MSN “Message could not be sent because a connection error occurred”, it does not necessary mean there is a connection error. It may also mean that Microsoft is filtering your message. If you’re in a chat…

  • Ashton

    MSN support in pidgin is poor, in my opinion, and the censorship thing is another pain. Though looking at the pidgin trac, it seems the new msn branch is almost ready. Still, a good excuse to promote XMPP/jabber, which for most people translates to Google Talk.

    Oh, and Hi! I finally came to my senses and I’m now doing a CS/IT related degree, like I should be (Software Engineering at RMIT).

  • http://trodrigues.net/fragility Tiago Rodrigues

    @Ashton: i think there are a couple of guys working on better msn support for pidgin on Google SoC.

  • http://bloxster.net/corywentzl/ watch
  • Ashton

    MSN support in pidgin is poor, in my opinion, and the censorship thing is another pain. Though looking at the pidgin trac, it seems the new msn branch is almost ready. Still, a good excuse to promote XMPP/jabber, which for most people translates to Google Talk.

    Oh, and Hi! I finally came to my senses and I'm now doing a CS/IT related degree, like I should be (Software Engineering at RMIT).

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