My daughter has AIM and was talking to her cousin. I can't find the archives to bring up the IM to read it.

Question

My daughter was online the other day under my AIM screen name talking to her cousin along with her friend who was over. Today my husband just called me from work telling me that either my daughter or her friend said some obsene and bad things to her. What I need help with is where do I look in my computer to find that convo? I went into my AIM preferences and there is no archives button to direct me to where the IM convo would be. Could someone please help me resolve this? Would it be in my history or in archives? I've looked and can't seem to find anything. Where would I look for this conversation from AIM messenger?
Thank you.

Answer 1

If I am not mistaken if your logs are turned on in the first place...

You should SIGN on to AIM... CLICK the person she talked to, open a message window like you are about to TYPE TO THEM, and then search in that window for the ARCHIVE or CHATLOG, it usually shows in the actual WINDOW of the person you talked to, rather than in an accessable file...

Otherwise open MY COMPUTER open C: and go to PROGRAM FILES then go to AOL or AIM and look for a possibe LOGS FOLDER< I will search for the correct answer, give me a moment.

Answer 2

I don't think that there is a way to retrieve this information from your computer. The best way is to call America On Line or your current internet provider and they can probably assist you. Even though I don't think that just because something obsene was said they might help you. I think they would only help you if it was a criminal plot or infidelity that was being requested by your lawyer or a judge.
But for something like that you should just talk to your daughter and her friend. What's the worst thing she could've said? Just make them apoligize after you find out the facts and don't let her use AIM if she can't act correctly. You can block it, ask AOL about that too.
Good Luck

Answer 3

I imagine the best thing to do is to confront your daughter and friend, and ask them directly what they said. Tell her because she was under your AIM screenname, you become responsible for whatever she says, and things said or interpreted wrongly may get you into difficulties. I'm just saying to try this approach first, because kids will fly into that "you're getting into my personal business" tantrum, and become even more secretive in the future about things they've done.

But if you must: I'm not sure if regular AIM keeps logs. Try looking from My Computer -> C: Drive -> Program Files -> AIM -> Logs. I believe it should be there somewhere, as I haven't used AIM in a long time, but I remember it being there.

Answer 4

It's entirely possible. I can't say if it's true in this case, but people do say that family members tend to stay together from lifetime to lifetime. The child is only 1 now; when she gets old enough to talk coherently, pay attention to what she says. Children often speak of past lives between the ages of 3 and 7. I'll give you a couple of links--first is University of Virginia where they study cases of children who speak of past lives. The second is to books by Michael Newton, who is a past life regression therapist.

Answer 5

If you have downloaded the AIM Messenger service, you would certainly have an archive button to either enable or disable archives. However, if you use AIM EXPRESS, this is a web-site generated messenger service and has no archive enabling. Hope this helps....

Answer 6

I don't spend a lot of time on AIM, so I may be telling you wrong. But, I thought that once you got done with a conversation and closed the screen, it just goes away. I don't think they get archived anywhere.

Answer 7

Now im not much of an AIM user myself i have AIM Pro and the Logs are in my Documents and Settings folder.

Have a look in your My Documents for an AIM folder perhaps or something that resembles it.

If you running Windows XP go to C:\Documents and Settings\username replacing username with yours and looking for a AIM folder or something like that and should be in there for you to look at.

Other then that it's looking into the help file under Logging or Logs or similar or contact AIM directly and ask for assistance :)

Answer 8

Perhaps you should ASK your daughter what happened, instead of trying to snoop first. TALKING with your children helps build open communication lines between the two of you. It's obvious that you don't trust your daughter enough to even ask her first and allow her the opportunity to come clean--instead you're trying to go the "Big Brother" route.

And if the conversation was not manually saved by your daughter (which is doubtful), there is no way to retrieve it. Sorry--now you really might have to allow your daughter to be truthful. A little trust goes a long way. Good luck.

Answer 9

It depends on what version of AIM you have and your computer.

It is possible, though. Some versions of AIM keep all of the conversations logged. I know because when I was quite a few years younger I used to look up all of the conversations I had with whoever I had a crush on.

Answer 10

By default, AIM does not save your conversations unless you specify in the preferences, so there is no way to get ahold of the conversation unless someone checked on the box to save a log of instant messages. If it is, the folder name will be in the preferences as well.