Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with MSN

Help me logon to my email!!

dmbfan93 — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:37:19 -0800

Please help me fix an internet/computer problem....I keep getting the message "Invalid Security Certificate" when I try to logon to my email accounts. I'm trying to logon to both my gmail account and my msn account and this morning I get the message "google.com uses an invalid security certificate"? This is just occuring, I was able to login last night. Does this have anything to do with a windows update that installed on my computer last night?

I try to logon to my MSN account and the exact same thing is occuring. The following message I get:

# This could be a problem with the server's configuration, or it could be someone trying to impersonate the server.

# If you have connected to this server successfully in the past, the error may be temporary, and you can try again later.

Please help me fix this!

Please help me stop getting msn messenger spam

complience — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:16:14 -0800

SPAM MSN Messenger Messages - when using Pidgin I hope you can help me stop getting spam messages from my msn messenger account when im logged in via Pidgin.

This seems to only happen on my Linux machine.

When I first log into my msn messenger account - i get this strange error message

Unable to add user
Uknown error (241)

I press close and login proceeds as normal, but i keep getting spam messages from users I don't know every couple of hours or so - i've posted some below, does anyone know how to stop them.

My online status should only be viewable to people on my allowed list and i only have a dozen or so people on this list. None of these people would be sending me spam - Its getting really annoying.

(00:41:03) kscheuffelkwanjai5sb06925k0e@hotmail.com: Hi I want to chat but this is my work account. Can you message me on my personal account jane.acevedo7977@hotmail.com looking foward to chatting.

(02:05:47) katherynlupama@hotmail.com: http://www.BestNightFire.com

(03:28:58) kniel0279pirab9hep0tnw99@hotmail.com: Hi I want to chat but this is my work account. Can you message me on my personal account jane.abraham0859@hotmail.com looking foward to chatting.

(06:16:57) jrbreitzphrom-borirak92z871@hotmail.com: Hi I want to chat but this is my work account. Can you message me on my personal account jane.aguilar74106@hotmail.com looking foward to chatting.

(09:05:56) kiracoolvajiralongkorn9fkx6fxvsar@hotmail.com: Hi I want to chat but this is my work account. Can you message me on my personal account jane.acosta90976@hotmail.com looking foward to chatting.

Spell check in Messenger?

joelf — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:49:57 -0800

Spell check in MSN Messenger? Is there a spell check program that runs in MSN Messenger that isn't spyware?

Where can I find statistics on the number of users for different instant messaging networks (aim, yahoo, google talk, icq, msn and so on) over time?

nolnar — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:03:58 -0800

Where can I find statistics on the number of users for different instant messaging networks (aim, yahoo, google talk, icq, msn and so on) over time? Not much extension is needed. I could just add that I'm looking for statistics that can:
- show what is the most popular IM network right now
- show what was most popular 5 years ago
- ideally show a graph that compares the user base of the networks over time

Tracking organic search and paid search referrals

superfurry — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 08:13:35 -0800

Under the hood of Google Analytics. GA does a great job of segmenting paid and organic search metrics - traffic, keywords, etc. How does it know one from the other ? I'm trying to build an organic search tracking system on my website. I want to cookie people who've come in from organic search differently to how I want to cookie people who've come in from paid search. My problem is, I don't know how to differentiate between organic and paid referrals. The referrer is always the same for both isn't it ?

I also need this to work across different search engines - Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc etc.

Anyone have any experience of doing this ? How do I tell an organic refferal from a paid one consistently across multiple search engines ?

Junk mail trader trying to sell a sucker a style.

uaudio — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:00:03 -0800

Every time I send an email from my cox.net account to my mom's MSN mail account, I get an autoreply from MSN saying there are complaints about my IP address sending junk mail. Huh? Here is what I get:

Please reply to Postmaster@cox.net
if you feel this message to be in error.
Reporting-MTA: dns; fed1rmmtao102.cox.net
Arrival-Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 22:07:09 -0400
Received-From-MTA: dns; fed1rmimpo02.cox.net (70.169.32.72)

Final-Recipient: RFC822; xxxxxx@msn.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Remote-MTA: dns; mx1.hotmail.com (65.54.245.8)
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. A block has been placed against your IP address because we have received complaints concerning mail coming from that IP address. We recommend enrolling in our Junk E-Mail Reporting Program (JMRP), a free program intended to help senders remove unwanted recipients from their e-mail lists. For enrollment instructions, please refer to: http://postmaster.live.com/Services.aspx#JMRPP. For additional information about Microsoft's technical guidelines, please refer to: http://postmaster.live.com/Guidelines.aspx

Can someone explain what this all means and how I can convince Microsoft I just want to send my mom some pictures of her two year old grandson - unless its him spamming...

For what its worth, I have a MacBook Pro and a Airport Extreme network with WAP security. And of course, the humor of getting this message when I myself receive about 10 junk emails a day from Hotmail addresses is not lost on me.

Do Yahoo or MSN offer search marketing grants to 501(c)3s?

meindee — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 13:10:38 -0800

My 501(c)3 was awarded a Google AdWords grant a couple of years ago. With the success of that program, Yahoo and MSN keep popping into conversations. Do either of them have a grant program?

Just type lol, not LOL....

Rabulah — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 10:10:32 -0800

I use Pidgin. A friend uses MSN Messenger. How do I turn off the annoying custom emoticons? Every time he types "LOL", I get this annoying little stick man who dances. When he types "time", I get this bizarre little clock picture. They aren't part of my emoticon set, and they appear to be being sent by MSN to Pidgin, because it takes a couple of seconds to load sometimes.

How do I stop this from happening? It really disrupts the flow of the conversation, and makes it hard to follow when I have to guess what the word behind the picture is. I've tried turning off emoticons completely, which works but also stops the normal smilies (which I don't want to happen), and I'm loathe to ask him to turn them off, because he seems to like them so much.

Interesting Statistics from Raw Data

PuGZ — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:09:34 -0800

What interesting statistics can I make from the following data? OK, I must admit that this question excited me so much that I jumped at the idea of re-creating a similar site for all the major networks (since the original site was down and only supported AIM).

Thus far I have a working daemon and ~200 users contributing data. My daemon records when users sign in, when they sign out, when they change their status and when they change their display name (MSN). What sort of interesting analyses and graphs can I make from this? So far I have:

* Pie graphs of status break-ups (how much time is spent in each status)
* Pie graphs of login times (morning, night, etc)
* Bar charts of logins per day of the week
* General "paragraph" of stats. Example:

IM Stats has been recording data for user@domain.com for 8 days, 11 hours, 15 minutes and 37 seconds. In this period, user@domain.com has spent 13 hours, 57 minutes and 44 seconds online in sessions lasting for 39 minutes and 2 seconds on average.

In each session, user@domain.com changed their status every 16 minutes and 45 seconds or 2.33 times per session.

user@domain.com has changed their nickname 46 times, or an average of once every 4 hours, 25 minutes and 7 seconds. Given their online habits, this is once every 18 minutes and 11 seconds they are online, or 2.15 times per session.

What would you like to see in such a site, Mefites?

Any tools to manage status for multiple messaging clients?

fsmontenegro — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 11:30:08 -0800

Are there any Windows utilities that manage the status information for multiple IM clients? Skype, MSN, Yahoo... I have used many IM clients over the years, including Trilliam, Miranda, as well as the "default" ones from MSN, Yahoo, etc... Because of the need for "advanced" features, I end up relying more on the standard clients rather than the cross-platform (Trillian, GAIM, Miranda, ...) ones.

Is anyone aware of a tool (Windows preferred, Java is OK) that will manage JUST the status information on multiple clients? I'd like something that I can select my status (online, away, busy, ...) and have that use each client's API to set the client status transparently.

Any ideas?

Why won't Office let me be legit?

itchie — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 18:13:52 -0800

I'm trying to clean up my act and bought a legitimate copy of Office for my Mac. Problem is, after deleting my (bootlegged) copy, it's still recognizing that copy over th legimitate one. What's up? Okay, so, for awhile I've been using a bootlegged copy of Office on my Mac. I recently bought it and attempted to uninstall the bootlegged copy (using the freeware AppDelete) in order to register my current copy. However, when I got the actual copy up and running, it keeps booting me off saying that the registered user is on and I cannot use the program.
My question is, what would be causing this? What files am I missing to delete to get the bootlegged copy completely off my computer and get my legit copy on there without the kick-off?
Thanks.

They're watching you...

Phire — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 22:45:49 -0800

How does MSN Messenger track your typing activity? I've wondered about this for a while now. MSN Messenger will display "XYZ is typing a message" when your contact is, ostensibly, typing a message. Having recently started using webcam more often, I've noticed that the statement remains for several seconds after they stop typing.

Were the message to stop displaying before they stopped typing, I'd just blame it on lagging time.

Anyway. How does Messenger track this? If I just move my cursor into the textbox, will it display as me typing? Sometimes a message pops up without "XYZ is typing" at all, so does that mean that short messages/single letters don't get logged? How long does that "is typing" thing stay after someone's stopped typing, and why? What prevents them from picking up the halt?

Why do MSN and skype drop out?

tomble — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 04:52:23 -0800

Network oddities with XP, MSN and skype. MSN keeps dropping out on me. I always seem to have a net connection, websites don't time out, downloads come through without a problem.

HOWEVER. Sometimes I fire up MSN messenger, which tells me I am online. But when I go to send a message, it suddenly tells me I am signed out.

Just this week I've started chatting with a friend on Skype, and it keeps dropping out every three minutes or so. He knows it's going to happen because MSN drops out first, then skype. However, MSN thinks it's logged on until I try to send a message.

Any advice or tips on how to find out what's going on would be appreciated. The modem and router aren't new, but this computer is a fairly recent addition to my household. If I had problems with connectivity every now and again I'd work it out myself, but I just can't seem to isolate the problem.

How did they get on my buddy list?

divabat — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 05:49:32 -0800

What is MSN Tracker V2.0 and am I at risk of getting hacked? I've noticed a couple of people have somehow added themselves to my MSN Messenger list. I don't recall approving them; they were just there.

During a conversation with one of them, he tells me that he got my email address off some software called "MsnTracker V2.0", which connects to the MSN servers and (I reckon) gets people there. There may have been a language barrier, but that's basically the gist of what he said. I felt really creeped out and blocked him.

I tried Googling "MSN Tracker" but didn't get anything useful. I've been told that I may be hacked (or will soon be), but I'm not sure. Spybot search only turns up with cookies for CasaleMedia; virus searches are clean.

What is this MSN Tracker business? Is it possible to track people through the MSN servers? How did they get themselves on my MSN Messenger list without me approving them? I don't use MSN that often, but this is scaring me. I've been hacked through ICQ many years ago and that wasn't fun.

any and all help appreciated, thanks!

Error code 80040111 can suck my left nut

Idiot Mittens — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 19:29:50 -0800

I moved and now I can't sign onto MSN Messenger. Gah? I just moved into a house on a university campus that uses its own "resnet" service along with other residences. I can't sign into MSN for some reason. I got the following message:

"Signing into Windows Messenger failed because the service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later. Error code 80040111."

I then tried the following:

1) Checked the status of the MSN service. It's fine.

2) Went through the "help" section of the program. It told me that if I could sign in okay to MSN web messenger then it's a firewall issue. I could sign into MSN web messenger okay.

3) Checked the Windows firewall to make sure that MSN Messenger is listed as an exception. Yup.

2) Asked the other people in the house if they can sign in okay. They can.

3) Called the computer help desk for the residences, got some guy that assured me the firewall should not be stopping this program.

4) Ran Adaware, Spybot and McCafee to check for problems. Nothing.

5) Uninstalled and reinstalled MSN 7.5. Nothing.

6) Tried signing in under another hotmail email address I have. Nothing.

7) Uninstalled MSN 7.5 and installed Windows Live Messenger. Nothing. Also tried both email addresses with this.

And if it means anything, for some reason when I type my email address into the entry screen for either version of Messenger, it takes about ten seconds before what I typed shows up.

So does anyone have any other suggestions? I'm at a bit of a loss for what to do next. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

MSN-to-email-to-SMS?

krisjohn — Wed, 24 May 2006 15:31:58 -0800

Anyone know any free solution for forwarding MSN messages to an email address? I have a PC at work that's always on, a friend in a different timezone and an email-to-SMS gateway. Anyone know if there's a program or plug-in that will glue all this together?

seeking search engine

sswiller — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 16:05:22 -0800

why are MSN, Yahoo & Google the only decent search engines nowadays? Are there any search engines made by organizations that don't enable the oppression of billions or aren't conspiring to hurt the Chinese?

Mac to MSN Messenger?

Wolof — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 19:47:27 -0800

Is there a way I can communicate via an iSight on my Mac (10.4) with someone who insists on using MSN Messenger 7.5? Such googling as I've done doesn't leave me very hopeful, but I'd be overjoyed if it could be done. Thanks!

Scrape groups.msn?

Lactoso — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 17:09:34 -0800

Need advice on moving an MSN group - particularly, recovering/scraping existing messages. I'm a member of a club who uses an MSN group (groups.msn.com) as it's central message board. This groups is about four years old so there are tens of thousands of individual messages.

I'd like to be able to (by some manner) download all of the messages that have been posted since the club's inception. The reasons are several and are listed in order of priority:

1 - To be able to move the club off of MSN and onto a private server running vBulletin or the like.
2 - To be able to set up a search function (already using Bancado's MSN.Groups index builder and www.freefind.com isn't that free).
3 - To be able to backup the messages.

Even if I were able to somehow get everything dumped into a huge textfile, I'd be able to parse it out (I was a software developer in a former life).

Any help would be great appreciated.

Thanks,
Ed T.

MSN.COM Email Away from Home?

Danf — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 13:19:39 -0800

How does an MSN subcriber read mail away from home? I have a dear friend who is rather benighted when it comes to technology, and she will be staying with me for several days on an extended road trip. Where she is now, she tried to find her msn.com email and could not figure it out, and I have taken a shot and cannot figure out if it's possible to get email from another computer that does not have the whole MSN dealie installed. I have tried mail2web but this does not work. Any clues?

stupid #$%! msn

stray — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 15:17:12 -0800

Why does my MSN Messenger for Mac 4.0.1 on my ibook keep signing me off every bloody five minutes? And are there any better IM programs I can use?

Have any MeFi technophiles tried one of the MSN Direct Smart Watches?

Fourmyle — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 17:48:46 -0800

GadgetFilter: Have any MeFi technophiles tried one of the MSN Direct Smart Watches? If so, what were your impressions of the watch & the service? [SImoreDE] I was interested in these when they first came out, but not interested enough to spend $130 on a watch and $70/year on the service.

Now, however, you can get the watches for $50 and the service for $40/year. That seems like a pretty good deal to me. I thought I'd check here first, though, and see if anyone has had any experience with the technology. Also, it seems possible that the price drops may indicate that the service will be discontinued. Anyone know if that's likely?

Can I dock MSN Messenger on the side of my (Windows XP) screen?

sanitycheck — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 13:11:40 -0800

Can I dock MSN Messenger on the side of my (Windows XP) screen? [mi] Please don't tell me to switch clients. I've recently switched to using Messenger regularly after using Trillian for years. I like Trillian a LOT better, but it doesn't support MSN audio/video. Pretty much all of my contacts are on MSN, and having recently moved across the country I find myself using the audio and video connections fairly regularly to chat with friends and family back home.

Anyhow, all I want to do is dock my messenger window on the side of my screen, and I have yet to be able to find a good solution via Google. I installed something called Messenger Plus which claimed it would let me do it, but they seem to have a different definition of "docking" than what I am looking for (their solution doesn't keep the docked window always-on-top).

Instant messaging across different networks. Is it possible?

karmaville — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 10:29:22 -0800

Instant messaging across different networks. Is it possible? [mi] I am trying to find a way to create a conversation from someone with a MSN account with someone with an AIM account and another with a Yahoo account for work purposes.

I looked at Trillian but I think I am misunderstanding the 'multi-network' aspect of the program or perhaps I'm just kind of stupid. Help.

VideoChat with WebCam

zia — Mon, 19 Jul 2004 08:48:12 -0800

I have a webcam and want to do video chat... Is MSN my only alternative? I've been VERY impressed with the quality of the VOIP calls I can make using Skype; is there something similiar for video conferencing with a webcam?