Yahoo IM wont connect

try:

killall pidgin; mv ~/.purple ~/.purple_old; pidgin &

You will now need to set up your account again. Your old settings are still stored in ~/.purple_old. If the new account connects, you can then review it and how it differers to the original settings

If you want to get the old settings back then simply rename it back:

rm -rf ~/.purple; mv ~/.purple_old ~/.purple

If you struck gold ith a fresh profile (above) then you can add the revised settings to the original profile.

If you struck gold ith a fresh profile (above) then you can add the revised settings to the original profile.

Thanks leoquant, that solved my question.

Because I always love when stuff like this happens... you should NOT use cn.scs.msg.yahoo.com unless you don't mind the Chinese viewing all your 'plain-text' communications:

traceroute to cn.scs.msg.yahoo.com (202.43.216.6), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 0.814 ms 0.932 ms 1.070 ms
 2 73.65.104.1 (73.65.104.1) 9.147 ms 9.171 ms 9.286 ms
 3 ge-1-10-ur01.fremontcev1.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.85.190.77) 18.330 ms 18.354 ms 18.565 ms
 4 te-9-3-ur01.fremont.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.87.192.65) 18.396 ms 18.569 ms 18.675 ms
 5 68.85.154.114 (68.85.154.114) 27.448 ms 27.480 ms 27.502 ms
 6 pos-1-7-0-0-cr01.sanjose.ca.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.90.153) 28.058 ms 14.589 ms 17.742 ms
 7 pos-0-0-0-0-pe01.11greatoaks.ca.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.86.50) 18.276 ms 18.284 ms 18.307 ms
 8 75.149.229.46 (75.149.229.46) 17.968 ms 18.000 ms 22.895 ms
 9 202.97.51.241 (202.97.51.241) 198.689 ms 198.704 ms 198.734 ms
10 202.97.53.106 (202.97.53.106) 222.384 ms 222.406 ms 222.431 ms
11 202.97.57.238 (202.97.57.238) 201.983 ms 202.011 ms 202.076 ms
12 bj141-130-114.bjtelecom.net (219.141.130.114) 207.080 ms bj141-130-110.bjtelecom.net (219.141.130.110) 186.169 ms bj141-130-114.bjtelecom.net (219.141.130.114) 207.065 ms
13 219.142.0.238 (219.142.0.238) 206.872 ms 206.890 ms 209.102 ms
14 UNKNOWN-203-209-238-171.yahoo.com (203.209.238.171) 203.299 ms UNKNOWN-203-209-238-169.yahoo.com (203.209.238.169) 203.675 ms UNKNOWN-203-209-238-163.yahoo.com (203.209.238.163) 203.330 ms
15 cs1.msg.cnb.yahoo.com (202.43.216.6) 203.532 ms 203.670 ms 205.685 ms
james@mindrot:~$ whois 219.141.130.114
% [whois.apnic.net node-2]
% Whois data copyright terms http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html

inetnum: 219.141.128.0 - 219.143.255.255
netname: CHINATELECOM-BJ
descr: CHINANET Beijing Province Network
country: CN
admin-c: CH93-AP
tech-c: HC55-AP
status: ALLOCATED NON-PORTABLE
mnt-by: MAINT-CHINANET
mnt-lower: MAINT-CHINANET-BJ
changed: <email address hidden> 20080729
source: APNIC

person: Chinanet Hostmaster
nic-hdl: CH93-AP
e-mail: <email address hidden>
address: No.31 ,jingrong street,beijing
address: 100032
phone: +86-10-58501724
fax-no: +86-10-58501724
country: CN
changed: <email address hidden> 20070416
mnt-by: MAINT-CHINANET
source: APNIC

person: Hostmaster of Beijing Telecom corporation CHINA TELECOM
nic-hdl: HC55-AP
e-mail: <email address hidden>
address: Beijing Telecom
address: No. 107 XiDan Beidajie, Xicheng District Beijing
phone: +86-010-58503461
fax-no: +86-010-58503054
country: cn
changed: <email address hidden> 20040115
mnt-by: MAINT-CHINATELECOM-BJ
source: APNIC

Just to let you all know out there ... hopefully you aren't sending passwords to your account at the Pentagon through that hub.

Another howto is: add a line to my /etc/hosts file
Code:

66.163.181.170 scs.msg.yahoo.com

Justamob:
This is a piece of moot information. Your data traversing through the internet could pass through any servers as it is a packet switched LAN. You do not have a single direct link to the sites you visit and the data travels all over the place to get to you (including through china)
So at any one of these points where the data hits an interconnecting device, to then be forwarded using routing protocols, your data can be sampled and read, your first statement is moot and hugely racist.

You may have to wait a little to get this one corrected...Pidgin web site indicates we'll need version 2.6.0 in the end:

http://www.celticwolf.com/useful-information/faqs/26-pidgin-yahoo

Yes the new version should fix this. Unfortunately Pidgin is not affiliated with Yahoo so if yahoo change something then pidgin wont work without tweaks then it is sorted in the next version. Its a pain.