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.
Technorati Tags: msn, censosrship, microsoft, .info, profile.php, facebook