I don't know how many here are familiar with the "Instant Messenger Wars", and I felt like griping somewhere, so I'm posting something here
Trillian is a freeware IM service developed by Cerulean Studios, allowing Users to connect to ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, IRC networks, and until recently, AIM; all in one client window. Trillian is attractive to many Users not only for the ability to connect to all those networks, but also for its extreme customizablitiy. It uses XML-based skins to make the interface do whatever the user likes, with even the most amateur skin far surpassing the blandness of AIM's design. It is also free of ads and other annoyances.
However, when I connected to Trillian this evening, I got a message from user "AOL Instant Messanger" stating: "You have been disconnected from the AOL Instant Message Service (SM) for accessing the AOL network using unauthorized software. You can download a FREE, fully featured, and authorized client, here
http://www.aol.com/aim/download2.html ."
After looking into this more, I've discovered that this isn't the first time it's happened. The same thing was done to Microsoft in 1999, and a startup called Odigo in 2000. AOL claims that other programs connecting to it's network compromises security. Odigo can still connect to the AIM network, just without file transfers.
http://www.trillian.cc