***update: Allah’s got vid of a former page who says he received sexual IM’s from Foley…Ian, part of the IM generation, continues the IM tutorial***

Earlier today, I heard some radio talk show hosts and callers who were casting doubt on the Foley instant messages and wondering out loud: “Who saves their instant messages?” And: “Can you even save them? I’ve never heard of that.” I’ve also seen it on a few blogs and now people are e-mailing me:

ABC better come up with the Instant Messages and verify that they are not fabricated before they continue this public hanging.

I do not know of anyone that would save their Instant Messages.

Please don’t spread this meme. You can save them on Google Chat. You can save them on AOL. You save them on Yahoo!

And guess what? They are formatted exactly like the Foley IMs published by ABC News. Here’s a Google chat I saved with my Hot Air pal Ian a few minutes ago:

8:01 PM me: hi ian. this is a test. you there?
8:04 PM Ian: hey
yes haha
sorry i really should turn on chat sounds
on
me: no problem. i am going to capture this chat to show people what an IM chat looks like. there seem to be a lot of people
8:05 PM who are clueless about instant
messenging.
have you noticed that?
Ian: haha
who is that?
oh yeah, some people barely understand e-mailing
me: exactly. ok, i’m going to work on my post. sorry to bother you. talk to you in a bit.

No, I didn’t just type it into a Word document. The chat is sitting on Google’s server.

Parents, please make yourselves familiar with the many kinds of software and preferences that capture IMs. Know what your kids are up to; Internet literacy will help keep your kids safe.

As for everyone else sending me e-mails parroting the “no one saves their IMs except for nefarious entrapment schemers and MSM fabrication artists:” Unless you have evidence, please stop accusing ABC News of making them up.

***

Allah, as always, has a good question:

Most of these IMs happened in 2003. Was the chat-saving technology available then?

They could have copy/pasted the exchanges. Did they?

I am going to forward this question to Brian Ross. Will let you know what I hear back.

Reader Michael e-mails:

I use Trillian which works with all the major IMs. I have logs that go back to 2001.

Reader Wayne:

I saw your post about on the issue of saving IM chat sessions to file.

I know that AIM (AOL’s IM program) had this capability back in 1999; in fact, it was enabled automatically when the program was installed.

I discovered this while poking around in my Windows account profile folders one day and discovered the log files (the files were named after the Buddy ID of the other chat party).

We are left to speculate how these log files got to the public. Were they on Foley’s laptop (without his awareness of this feature) and discovered by IT support personnel or others(recall that he was in a hotel room when the first indecent IM exchange was posted by ABC-TV), or the former page saved/sent them to someone (if so, when was this done)?

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