This reminds me of something that I was intending to try and research....

AOL Instant Messenger and some other similar creatures have some sort of
protocol for discovering who is 'online' and then exchanging messages.  The
spamers of this world have now discovered this protocol and are making use of it to
send out spam IM messages trying to get you to go to some web site, etc.  From
the junk that I have been getting it is clear that there is some custom
written code doing the automated messaging.

Thoughts...

1) knowing the protocol, it would be fairly easy (?) to create such a text
based messaging utility for MPE

2) there are nice legitimate business uses for IM type messaging.

Anyone seen anything resembling specs for this protocol?

Wayne

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