Web Instant Messengers (IMs)

One challenge of todays network administrators is to control their firewall so users are not able to use instant messenger (IM) especially on corporate world. There are lots of threats found on this web application that makes user’s operating system to crash. Some organization didn’t allow this to be used on their workplace but there are Web IMs that can be used which you don’t need the software (e.g. Yahoo Messenger) to be installed.

Administrators may use this reference to block URLs so it may not be accessed by users:

GMail’s GTalk

http://chatenabled.mail.google.com

http://talk.google.com

http://www.google.com/talk

Yahoo Messenger

http://messenger.yahoo.com/webmsgr/fmsgr.php

MSN Messenger

http://webmessenger.msn.com/

Other Web IMs

http://wwwl.meebo.com/index-en.html

http://www.ebuddy.com/

http://www.messengerfx.com/

http://www.msn2go.com/

http://www.iloveim.com/

These are my initial list, thanks to isaserver.org for this reference. You may watch Yahoo on their upcomming Web IMs that will be integrated on their Y! Mail (see this link). If you have other URLs using Web IMs, please comment on my blog so I may include on this list.