Asking the LJ Braintrust: AIM problems

[damont]

When I logged into AIM this afternoon, my previously existing buddy list was gone, and there was a new category called "orphans" that had a half dozen or so "buddies" in it that all appear to be spammers. Does anyone have any idea what may have happened? The AIM website is unhelpful.

Comments

Really wish I could help....

[h3salthea.livejournal.com]

...but then I went to the Dark Side a while ago...

I use Pidgin...

Re: Really wish I could help....

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I'm using Pidgin too. Pidgin apparently pulls its buddy list from the one stored at AIM; I have been looking everywhere in my computer's files and have found no trace of any buddy list. Zip, zero, zilch, nada.

Re: Really wish I could help....

[craig trader (from livejournal.com)]

This is correct: Pidgin will pull the buddy list for each account from that account's service.

Re: Really wish I could help....

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Meebo also does this, at least by default.

[glynisgwynedd.livejournal.com]

I wondered where you were all day.

Re: Really wish I could help....

[craig trader (from livejournal.com)]

Given that buddy list is a feature of the service, it wouldn't make sense to implement it locally (other than to include data attributes that the service doesn't support).

From what I understand, the 'orphans' group is a feature of Pidgin that shouldn't be necessary. The recommendations I've seen suggest that you should be able to delete the 'orphans' group, restart Pidgin, and then things should clean themselves up. You may need to go so far as to delete your AIM account and recreate it, at which point Pidgin will re-cache your buddies from AIM.

Re: Really wish I could help....

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Simply deleting the orphans group and restarting Pidgin did not restore the previous buddy list. It appears that the only thing that can be done at this point is to recreate the buddy list manually (which would have to be done if I deleted and restarted the AIM account as well).

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry I didn't catch you, but that's what has been happening. If you don't see me on AIM tomorrow before you head for bed, call please?

[glynisgwynedd.livejournal.com]

Will do, superpel. This is one of the reasons I like facebook so much, btw, it has IM software built right in to it. :)