Saving yahoo messengers ignore list

Derek: I know you are being blunt, but no need to be so rude about it! She is simply asking if anyone else happens to know a way, since in Yahoo! there is usually a way around things. And she is basically asking if someone else can confirm everything you said, because not one person knows all! Plus when you said it’s stored on server, she was hoping there was a way to work around it just like with copying a buddylist…

Now, carriemeawayplz, i don’t know the answer to your question at all, but hopefully someone else who reads this can add in more information than what was already given. Hope you get the appropriate answers!

And remember to keep this friendly and helpful!

Lets get back to topic folks

Your ignore list is stored online and sent to you everytime you login.

Yahoo! messenger retrieves this and put it into a listbox in preferences >> ignore list

This is all a ignore list does, as the “client” yahoo! messenger will read from it once it is loaded after logging in and reject pm’s and invites etc from that id(s) on that list.

There used to be a webpage that would list your inore list, not sure if it’s still active after the java removal, i forget the actual url now, it’s been a while.

You Cannot just put on ignore list to another id automatically as the list is attached to that one id and is sent with the list of bad words on every login.

Yahoo! only allow you to have about 98 people on this serverside ignore.

To add the same id’s to another id you will have to add them manually, you can do this by writing down their id’s and using a chat client that uses commands, to make it easier, or go to Actions >> Send an instant message and put their id in the Other contact and open a pm to them and ignore them from that one at a time.

This is the Only way you’re gonna be able to export a serverside ignore from one id to another.

Carriemeawayplz, I know of a couple ways to save your permanent ignore list (not sure why you would want to do it though).

First way that comes to mind:

Get a hold of a third party client that “imports” and saves the perm ignores to a text file (or other) on your hard disk. Once you locate the file pluck out the users you need or all of them if you need all of them. I can’t specifically tell you any because I don’t use third party clients much so I’m not sure which ones have this capability and which ones don’t.

Second way (my way):

You could enable the local “logfile” in Yahoo! Messenger and get a copy of your perm ignore list this way (as well as any list you’d ever need). I will note however that keeping this enabled could jeopardize your privacy in YM and allow others to keep tabs on you (if your computer is “shared” with others). If this is used safely that wouldn’t be a problem for you.

To obtain a comma-delimited complete list of your permanent ignores you will need to follow these exact steps in order (assuming you’re using Yahoo! Messenger 8.0):

1) Go to “Run…” from your windows start button, type this command in and execute it: “ymsgr:enablelog?1”. When you do this Yahoo! Messenger ‘should’ open itself and you will need to sign into your Yahoo! account that has the permanent ignores you need to save (fetch a copy of). After you’ve signed in you’ll see a dialog box about logging, click “ok”. Messenger will then close out and you will need to restart it, logging into the same account you were signed into before. Once you’ve signed in *the logging is taking place at this point* you will then need to go to your Program FilesYahoo!Messengerlogs directory. Once you get there you will see a text file with a .log extension named along the lines of “network_.log”. Looking for network is enough as it’s the only log file in that folder that starts with that name. When you find this file it should already contain your logged information from when you just signed in. Open this file with a text editor such as notepad. Place your cursor at the first line in the file (at the very top where the data starts) and hold control and type “h”. When the dialog opens where it says “Find what:” paste this in exactly: 3013203003207

Where it says “Replace with:” type a comma and then choose the “Replace All” command button on the right. Once this is done it’ll auto-parse your permanent ignore list and will comma-delimit the names for you so it’s readable. After this is done go to the start of the file again, hold control type “f” for find and paste this string in: 3207

This will find the very first permanently ignored user for you. Copy from this user’s id to the end of your comma-delimited ignore list and have it end at the last comma-delimited entry just before 301320303320

Paste your comma-delimited list into notepad or wordpad and save it. After you’re done go back to “Run…” from the start menu in windows and type in: “ymsgr:enablelog?” and click “Ok” to disable further logging. Do NOT leave this on.

This can be applied to any and all versions and builds of Yahoo! Messenger, not just version 8.0. The difference, however, is in finding that information in the logfile from Messenger version to version. Since the protocol version # is always higher with newer versions the contents that are logged can sometimes change *requiring different parsing routines*. With YMSG 14 and below the lists were usually comma-delimited already for you when they’re sent but in YMSG 15 *8.0* that’s not the case, instead the new key/value pairs are used to separate each item/name in the packets.

Using this logfile isn’t something I’d ever advise anybody do unless they knew exactly what it is and how it works. Last year I published a security advisory that explains it which can be found here: Bugtraq: Yahoo! Messenger may be storing all session data ‘Unencoded’ on the local machine

A lot of information is logged and can be used positively or negatively depending on what the purpose is. Since this could be used to achieve carriemeaway’s goal I figured it was worth mentioning.