Do you run a network where people are allowed to use AIM to message each other? Have you ever wondered what these people are talking about? Well now you have the ability to keep track of all AIM conversations on a network with AIM Sniff. Screw privacy, I need to see who Tracey has a crush on.

AIM Sniff is a utility for monitoring and archiving AOL Instant Messenger messages across a network. You can either do a live dump (actively sniff the network) or read a PCAP file and parse the file for IM messages. You also have the option of dumping the information to a MySQL database, a flat file, STDOUT, or any combination of the three. AIM Sniff allows administrators to see how often users are chatting to monitor for abuse and you can also use AIM Sniff to monitor for cases of harassment or pirated software trading. It has been tested on FreeBSD, Linux, and OS X.

Surprisingly, it’s one of the few open source websites that looks decent.

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