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Skype and Windows Live Messenger

February 28, 2014 by Noah
Back in the day, I ran a couple of chatbots on Windows Live Messenger (although it was called MSN Messenger then), so I'm reasonably familiar with how the Microsoft Notification Protocol (MSNP) works. We had a Perl module called MSN.pm which works with the MSNP10 version of the protocol, and it probably still works today.

That's right, the Windows Live Messenger protocol is still perfectly alive and well today. A while back, I booted my Windows OS on my PC where I still had Pidgin set up to sign me into MSN, and surprisingly it still worked. One of my Skype contacts sent me a message over Pidgin, and their "MSN e-mail address" had an "@SkypeDomain.fakedomain" domain part. It seems that now, though, while the MSN servers are still up, they at least block non-Chinese users from authenticating (Pidgin says "invalid response from server").

The Skype/MSN merger was done in a pretty half-assed way by Microsoft:

  • If you sign in with your Skype username, you only see Skype contacts.
  • If you sign in with your MSN username, you see both MSN and Skype contacts.
  • Even though you can use your old MSN username, and chat with existing MSN contacts, there doesn't seem to be a way to add a new MSN contact through Skype.
It appears that the Skype client actually acts like a "mini Pidgin": when you sign in with your old MSN account, Skype actually signs you in separately to the Skype and MSN servers. And, on the MSN side of things, the "@SkypeDomain.fakedomain" extension was probably implemented similarly to what happened when MSN and Yahoo joined forces, and your Yahoo contacts on MSN would have "@yahoo.com" domain extensions.

I don't get why Microsoft doesn't just pull the plug on MSNP completely, and force everyone to get a Skype name if they don't already have one linked with their MSN accounts.

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Curi posted on March 10, 2015 @ 17:44 UTC

Hi...since you get about chatbots etc and skype/msn stuff.....I am wondering if yo7 can help. I have found in our live.com accounts contacts a whole heap of sexual usernames. They look like skype names.....but they arent in our skype account. I dont usually ude this account my husband does. There are over 50 contacts....they werent there 2 monthe ago. He claims he doesnt know what they are and over time recieves some random pornbot requests on skype and msn. A while ago his yahoo which was linked was hacked.....and possibly his skype....as his skype profile pic changed to boobs....adnd messaged me while asleep. Could these new contacts found be a security spam compromise....or does that seem unreastic. Could they be legit contacts.

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Emtiaz Alom posted on March 11, 2015 @ 18:07 UTC

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vishal posted on August 6, 2016 @ 13:05 UTC

SO TRUE article sir , but Skype for Business" is currently lacking Many feature skype push to talk , as per tinypost officials

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ravi posted on July 21, 2018 @ 07:27 UTC

If you want to call someone through on his sim card. Then you have to pay a little to buy Skype credit.

skype push to talk mac

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