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RB | July 7, 2018

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RIP Yahoo Messenger

Do you remember Yahoo Messenger? It was popular in the late ’90s and early 2000s when there were only two messengers to communicate with your friends and family. Well … the remnants of Yahoo nee Verizon recently announced the end of Yahoo Messenger. Verizon (VZ)/Yahoo announced that they will disable the Yahoo Messenger service after July 17th, 2018. (rb- yes Yahoo Messenger was still a thing – in the face of Apple‘s (AAPL) FaceTime, Telegram, Snapchat, and Facebook‘s (FB) WhatsApp).

According to the Oath website, YIM had 122.6 million users at its peak. In the FAQ announcing the shutdown, Yahoo said, “We know we have many loyal fans who have used Yahoo Messenger since its beginning … As the communications landscape continues to change over, we’re focusing on building and introducing new, exciting communications tools that better fit consumer needs.” If you’re looking for a Messenger replacement from Yahoo, they recommend Squirrel, which is in closed beta and by invite only. But why?

YIM leaves a dubious security legacy, as all “free” web products do. In 2007 there were reports that up to 75% of the users in Yahoo Messenger were SPAMBots. In 2010 all Yahoo systems and customer email accounts were hacked by the Chinese military in “Operation Aurora.” In Operation Aurora the Chinese also attacked Adobe (ADBE ), Dow Chemical, Google (GOOG) Juniper Networks (JNPR ), Morgan Stanley, Northrop Grumman (NOC ), Rackspace (RAX), and Symantec (SYMC).

In 2014 The Guardian reported that The British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)’s secret mass surveillance program Optic Nerve and National Security Agency (NSA) were indiscriminately collecting still images from Yahoo webcam streams from millions of mostly innocent Yahoo webcam users, among other things creating a database for facial recognition for future use. Optic Nerve takes a still image from the webcam stream every 5 minutes. Also in 2014 Yahoo was also hit by a hack that affected around 500 million people.

In September 2016, The New York Times reported that Yahoo’s security team, had pressed for Yahoo to adopt end-to-end encryption sometime between 2014 and 2015, but senior leadership resisted, “…because it would have hurt Yahoo’s ability to index and search message data.”

In 2017 Yahoo announced that all of its customer’s accounts were compromised. Allegedly Yahoo did not detect the full extent of the 2013 hack until 4 years later. In 2017, Yahoo announced that all 3 billion accounts were compromised.

You can download your chat history for the next 6 months at this download request site. Yahoo will email your chats to you. If you have anything you want to save from Yahoo Messenger, it’s a good idea to get a copy, because users will be unable to sign in to the service after July 17th.

rb-

YIM is not the first long-standing chat app to shut down – AOL Instant Messenger shut down December 15, 2017. But Yahoo Messenger was one of the few old-school messaging services left.

Related article

The Secret to Disconnecting? Bring Back the ‘Away’ Message (The Wall Street Journal)

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: 2018, AOL, Breach, Business, China, Data, Edward Snowden, Instant messaging, Operation Aurora, Optic Nerve, Privacy, RIP, Spambot, Verzion, VZ, Yahoo

RB | December 6, 2017

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OMG Texting b 25 !

This week marks the 25th birthday of text messages. Texting is more properly known as SMS. On Dec. 3, 1992, 22-year-old Sema Group software architect Neil Papworth typed the first SMS (Short Message Service) message, “Merry Christmas” on a computer and sent it over a GSM network in the UK, to an Orbitel 901 handset owned by then-Vodafone director Richard Jarvis.

In 1993, a year after the first text message was sent, Nokia (NOK) set up the first commercial SMS service in Finland. Nokia was the first handset manufacturer whose total GSM phone line supported users sending SMS text messages. In 1997, Nokia became the first manufacturer to produce a mobile phone with a full keyboard: the Nokia 9000i Communicator.

Texting adoption

SMS adoption was slow at first, with only 0.4 text messages sent per month in 1995. The fact that UK users could only send SMS messages to those on the same network was a big problem until the restriction was lifted in 1999. However, as smartphone technology developed and text messages became easier to use, SMS popularity ballooned. As mobile phones became more popular, texting skyrocketed. By 2007, the Brits were sending 66 billion SMS messages a year and in 2012, they sent 151 billion texts.

In the U.S. SMS was slower to catch on, mainly because mobile operators charged more for texts and less for voice calls, and because of the popularity and availability of PC-to-PC instant messaging or IM. However, in the United States, 45 billion text messages were sent per month in 2007, a figure that became 167 billion per month in 2011. In June 2017, 781 billion text messages were being sent in the United States per month according to the experts.

U.S. Texts Sent

Month	Number of Text Messages Sent Each Month	Increased Number of Text Messages Sent YoY	% Increased Number of Text Messages Sent YoY
June 2017	781.000,000,000	147,000,000,000	431.3%
June 2016	634,000,000,000	73,000,000,000	768.5%
June 2014	561,000,000,000	63,000,000,000	790.5%
June 2013	498,000,000,000	75,000,000,000	564.0%
June 2012	423,000,000,000	56,000,000,000	655.4%
June 2011	367,000,000,000	126,000,000,000	205.8%
June 2010	247,000,000,000	86,000,000,000	187.2%
June 2009	161,000,000,000	86,000,000,000	87.2%
June 2008	78,000,000,000	30,000,000,000	150.0%
June 2007	45,000,000,000	32,500,000,000	38.5%
June 2006	12,500,000,000	5,250,000,000	138.1%
June 2005	7,250,000,000	4,390,000,000	65.1%
June 2004	2,860,000,000	1,660,000,000	72.3%
June 2003	1,200,000,0002	270,000,000	344.4%
June 2001	33,000,000	21,000,000	57.1%
June 2000	12,000,000

Text Message Statistics – United States from Statistic Brain (www.statisticbrain.com)

With 25 years under its belt, many people wonder if the end of the line is near for SMS. This is because apps such as Apple‘s (AAPL) iMessage, Google‘s (GOOG) Hangouts, Facebook‘s (FB ) Messenger, WhatsApp, and SnapChat have become very popular.

Closed systems

These new chat applications also marked a more fundamental shift away from an open standard that anyone could use (even if your operator charged you) to closed messaging systems controlled by technology giants. Text messages, however, might not be going away soon. SMS is a very practical and easy-to-use communication method, especially for areas and countries that do not have reliable internet connections.