Update: Another virus hits Yahoo! Messenger.

A virus which is not new to Yahoo!'s network seems to be hitting it again. A Romanian website for security warns users of Yahoo! Messenger about its existence and offers help in fixing it. This virus sends various links, most of them referring to Facebook (so this creates confusion between users). Some of them are pasted here:

• http://ow.ly/2D4zB?=www.facebook.com/photo.php
• is this you on pic?  http://ow.ly/2cWs2?=www.facebook.com/photo.php
• foto :D http://ow.ly/2d3aB?=www.facebook.com/photo.php
• foto :D http://ow.ly/2cTes?=www.facebook.com/photo.php
• foto :D http://ow.ly/2bmMb?=www.facebook.com/photo.php
• foto :D http : //ow.ly/2b7Xp?=www.facebook.com/photo.php
• foto :D http://ow.ly/2aG6r?=www.facebook.com
• foto :D http://ow.ly/2arJj?=www.facebook.com
• foto :D http://ow.ly/2aHoc?=www.facebook.com

The virus asks user to download a file, which is, of course, the virus. Here are some examples of files containing the virus:

• 012457566896789-JPG-www.facebook.com.exe
• PIC348u6234-www.facebook.com.JPG.exe
• n719753102_09.JPG-www.facebook.exe
• n11975310_09.JPG-www.facebook.exe
• n11975310_09.JPG-www.facebosok.exe
• n777719102_09.JPG-www.facebook.exe
• 102_09.JPG-www.facebook.exe 
• 9.JPG-www.facebook

Normally, an antivirus program should detect the malware and remove it, but if it doesn't (or you don't have one), you may download Palevo Removal v2 from here. This program should automatically close the virus and remove it. All you need to do then is to reboot. 

Note: Windows 7 and Vista users must click "This program works correctly" when prompted. 


Thanks to the Romanian website called IT Security which made everything possible. (Google translated webpage here).


Update: The admin from IT Security warned me that the virus is downloading more and more files with strange names (it's quite impossible to keep up with it). He also told me that using Malwarebytes should help much (download here). Make sure to update after installation and then perform a full scan. 

Yahoo! Messenger login issues?

Since this morning, I've been experiencing important problems when logging in into Yahoo! Messenger. In the morning, I started my desktop PC on which I got the following message several times when I tried to connect from Ubuntu, with Pidgin

Account locked: You have been logging in too frequently.  Wait a few minutes before trying to connect again.  Logging into the Yahoo! website may help.

followed by

Received invalid data.

After all these messages, it simply connected by itself. I thought that it was a problem with the way Pidgin was authenticating on Yahoo!'s servers, but in the after-noon, I tried to login from a Window-based laptop, on Yahoo! Messenger 10, and surprise. It said that my password was wrong. OK, I gave it another try. And then another one. And I continued like this five more times.

In an end, I got an error which said that the messenger can't communicate normally to its servers (actually, my password wasn't wrong). After I got this, I successfully logged in at the following try.


I have no idea which is the problem, but I hope that Pidgin was wrong. I mean, I don't login frequently on Yahoo! and, anyway, I think that it was referring that somebody tries again and again to login from my account so it was locked because of this (exactly, I'm afraid that somebody tries to hack it).

If you have this problem please don't hesitate to leave a comment telling us also when your problem started!

Yahoo! launches broken Android application.

Yahoo! launched two own applications for Android, Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mail. I've installed them both, and I must tell you that I am disappointed by both. The messenger is completely useless. It connects to Yahoo!, but it doesn't display any contact as online. All my contacts are seen as offline, even if I currently have about 45 of them online (and visible, of course).

Regarding to the mail, it works, but it does it really slow. Too slow for a mail client, in my opinion. Viewing through the content of the mails is fine, but the time from when you select another mail and you view it, is simply too much. On a 1 GHz processor and 512 MB of ram, with Android 2.2 Froyo installed. OK, if it works like this on Nexus One, how does it work on slower devices?!

Have you installed these two programs? How are they working (if they are...) on your device?

Fixing "connection refused" problem in Pidgin (Ubuntu).

"Connection refused" error is a problem which is known by many Linux users. It is usually occurred (sometimes) on most IM clients, especially when trying to connect to Yahoo!. This is a very annoying problem, and almost nobody knows exactly how to fix it (and if they fixed it, what they really did). Certain is that this usually occurs when the guys from Yahoo! are changing the way users are authenticating on their servers. So their servers are probably misconfigured (for Linux users), and they are simply refusing all clients who are coming from other clients, different than their own client (application).

There are some ways of fixing this on the internet. It has been reported that if you continue trying to connect, you could be in a final connected or redirected to a server which allows authentication in the old way. However, theoretically spoken, this solution is only temporary. If you disconnect, you'll probably have again problems connecting. Other users reported that changing the server on which the application is logging on may resolve the problem. I've tried changing it between scsa.msg.yahoo.com, cn.scs.msg.yahoo.com, scs.msg.yahoo.com and other addresses like these. I tried to change the address even with server's IP address directly (thinking that it could be an address resolving problem), everything with no luck.

But I continued trying, and after tens of forums and blogs, I found on brainstorms.in a user who reported that changing the server to scsd.msg.yahoo.com works. And it really works. So, if you have this problem, click on Accounts -> (on your account) Edit Accounts -> Advanced, and on the first row (Pager server), put "scsd.msg.yahoo.com".

Please leave a comment to know if this fixed your problem or not.

Why Yahoo! has never created a messenger version for Linux?

Yahoo! has created different versions of their messenger for both Windows and Mac operating systems, and for mobiles (iPhone, Blackberry, etc), but they have never launched an official version for Linux. And I can't understand why. If they worked for so many versions (for all operating systems), how hard would it be for them to crate one more, for Linux?

There are available many applications capable of connecting with Yahoo! (such as Pidgin or Empathy internet messengers, and a very complex dedicated application, named GYachE), but a proprietary messenger application would be well-welcomed. This can avoid from repeating the problem that millions of Linux users occurred just after Yahoo! updated the way users were authenticated on their servers (for Yahoo! Messenger 10). That made their servers to refuse almost any trial to connect from Linux operating systems. The problem was fixed, but that took some time.... And, on an official version, any functionality that Yahoo! can offer should work normally.

I really can't understand why they didn't made any version for Linux. Probably, they don't really care about users.

Twitter is a part of our lives.

Twitter, the popular micro-blogging platform, is a network that anybody "should use". It's the best socializing platform I've ever seen. I've joined it about 4 months ago, and I'm actively using it every day. Twitter helped me to find really nice people from any part of the world, and also generated some traffic to my blog. But it also helped me to get the latest news very easy, in minutes after they were released on the internet, without having to wait for the magazines I'm usually reading until they appear.

Twitter has grown dramatically in the last year, so their servers are sometimes out of capacities when something important happens, and everybody tweets about it. Due to this aggressive increase of users, many programs appeared which can allow you to connect to Twitter in other ways than via "Web" method, providing you different ways to use Twitter, and many options to make it more efficient.

Yahoo!'s "Meme", a kind of Twitter, was launched by Yahoo! but so far, it has no success. I'm just thinking about how much time can Google resist without buying Twitter, because the more they wait, the more they will have to pay for it. And even if Google didn't declare anything about a possible acquisition of Twitter, many experts said that now is the moment when Google should take Twitter.

So, if you didn't do it already, I invite you on http://twitter.com/ to create an account, and then to start following me. My username is "ITeer". Enjoy Twitter !

Best Yahoo! Messenger client for Ubuntu.

Some of the most requested features for Ubuntu are probably video and calling functionality for Yahoo! Messenger. The chatting functions for Y!M network are assured by Pidgin Internet Messenger and, from 9.10, by Empathy Internet Messenger (as default multi-chatting service).You can't use or view webcams, or call or receive calls, like as in the official Y!M for Windows.

There is a very complex (maybe too complex), Yahoo! Messenger dedicated chatting client, which can bring voice and webcam functionalities to you. It's called GYachE (or GYachI). It has many functionalities... such as webcam and voice calling (if the drivers from Ubuntu can permit this), mail checker, very customizable chatting options and many, many others (trust me, the're so many).

Program is perfect for experts (they should get how it works fast), but the others, it might take a little to learn how to use it and what it can. The interface is complicated, and I think that they could make it a little more... organized, but for me, it's fine. You can hide offline contacts by clicking where it says "Friends: xxx Online: xx", and selecting "Don't Show Offline Buddies".

The current version is 1.2.2, designed for Karmic, and it's pretty buggy. For installation, you must have an internet connection available because it needs some dependencies from the internet.

If the program becomes unstable, let it like that until it starts responding again, otherwise it has bigger chances to crash.

Download link (Karmic Koala):

http://www.4shared.com/file/192403865/ea495118/gyachi_122-2karmic_i386.html

Do you want a cool status for Y!M ?

Last night when I was navigating on the Internet, I discovered (via a friend) how you can get a pretty cool status. Is is drawn, and it represents a house between some trees. Just like this one
I really liked it so I put it on my status, and I had some buddies which asked me about that. So, what you have to do is to put those things *̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ *̡͌l̡* on your status and you will get that picture. It works on Yahoo! Messenger, but it might not work on other IM services such as MSN, Skype or AIM ( I don't know, I didn't test it on that services). Enjoy !

P.S: If you like it, please forward this link http://bit.ly/5Qup2A to your friends.

Problems with Yahoo! Messenger 10 ?

Yahoo! Messenger 10 was launched some time ago, but its problems are not yet resolved. Most of the reported problems are with the statuses, which refuses to change (and for sure, this is one of the most annoying problems). I got this problem several times, but Yahoo did not launch yet a fix for it. Other reported problems, and met by me, were with the sudden blocking of the program, and sometimes, even with the instant crashing of the program. On the last days, I really had serious issues when trying to change statuses, so that's why I decided to open this subject. 

If you have problems like those mentioned before, or any other kind of problems with Yahoo!Messenger 10, please don't hesitate to leave a comment with details about it here.