<p>Being the second modern client after ICQ, AIM was initially released in 1997.</p>
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<h3>Censorship</h3>
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<p>AIM servers filter strings containing <i><img</i> and <i><script</i>, which are tags in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) AIM uses to encode messages (so as to support fonts, colors, etc.).</p>
<p>HTML tags that you put into the inputline are “escaped” by Adium, so that the recipient's client will not attempt to use the HTML tag; it will simply display the text of the tag. However, it appears that the AIM server drops messages containing even escaped HTML (but only those two tags—other tags work fine).</p>
<p>AIM will also drop any message containing a link to a file: address. These addresses are intended to refer to files on the sender's or your computer. (The file need not actually exist on one end or the other. A perfectly valid file: link can refer to a path that does not exist on anyone's machine, such as this one.)</p>
<p>On the other hand, it will allow the message if the address is plain text instead of a link. So, for example, “Check out what I just wrote: file:///Users/me/Documents/Why-Adium-is-awesome.txt” will go through, but “Check out <aclass="ext_link"href="file:///Users/me/Documents/Why-Adium-is-awesome.txt">what I just wrote</a>” will not.</p>