I have recently been using msn msnger 7.0 on my computer at work.  I have just heard that corporate firewalls can easily be configured to intercept messenger traffic, log message contents, and screen messages for keywords.

firstly, is it anyone here's experience that this is true, and secondly, is there anyway for me to check whether this is happening at my company ?(aside from trying to get caught sending dodgy messages!)

I have had personal conversations with friends and need to know if they can be accessed by our IT admins.

Hi.
Yes this is possible and I have experianced it. I have been having problems with Zone Alarm's IM Secure feature as my freind's version has been blocking me from talking to her on MSN Messenger when I have Messenger Discovery running with it.

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I don't think that anyone on your network can look at your conversations and monitor them though. The only way they could do this is to check any message logs. To make sure they can't see these and to disable logging make sure that from the main MSN Messenger window  Tools > Options... > Messages > Automaticly keep a history of my convesations. is unchecked and if you have Messenger Plus! installed be sure Plus! > Preferances... > Logging > Automatically log all my chats by default is unchecked.

message logging is off, but am still concerned that smart firewall systems might log the traffic and do keyword search for content that might break company internet usage policies....

thanks for your thoughts Mr Authority

I see what you meen and it is possible to have key loggers that take note of every key you press on the keyboard but I doubt that in a work place someone would go to these measures. I'm not sure but I also think that this is illegal as it is against your privacy. But anyway, i don't think that they would be using this and even if they had key loggers installed, i doubt someone would actuly read through it all to check up on you. I don't know though, just what I think

agree with you about key loggers - very unlikely.

I would hope that privacy laws would prevail but also read out company internet policy and it says they pretty much have the right to look at anything. 

needless to say I have taken the safe road and uninstalled Messenger...just worried about conversations already had....

I guess you could use MSN Web Messenger. But then again they may see you were on it on the history etc.

Guess you're going to have to stick with the fone under the desk method

I will survive      It's just the waiting game will kill me!  I wish I knew either way....