liveHarmony update

July 23, 2003 (Updated July 31, 2003)

In the past several months, liveHarmony has been the target of repeated and ongoing attacks on our primary servers. Despite great efforts to negate these attacks and maintain our regular service to our faithful users, it has become apparent that those involved in these attacks are not willing to stop.

This service is offered free to people who want to chat and develop communities online. We have had great success and are extremely proud of the hard work all our staff and our helpful users have contributed to liveHarmony.

Sadly, we have to announce that our general client server is going offline permanently. Starting August 1st, we will only accept Java connections. QuickChat and liveHarmony Java applets will continue to function normally. mIRC, PIRCH and other non-Java software will no longer work with our service.

Registered nicknames and chat rooms will remain intact. However, only users on a Java applet (web page) will be able to connect to the service. If you would like to remain with us and do not have our chat room code on your web site, please visit our code generator. Alternatively, you may use our ChatWeb service to access your chat room if you do not have your own web site. For those not wishing to stay with us, we have compiled a list of alternative networks.

This was a very difficult decision. However, we are confident that our users who have been right along side us during all our months of operation will understand that we have done what we can to continue full, optimal service.

Having said that, we are going to remain a team and will be working together to develop some great products to help people chat more safely and confidently. Please look for news about us on various websites, including liveharmony.org, which will give you more detailed information about our security training that we will be offering free to the public.

Additionally, we are designing a new breed of chat service. Our new architecture is fundamentally about user empowerment -- right down to the servers themselves. This system is also more resistant to the attacks we have been facing. We'll be providing more information on this system in the coming months.

In closing, we will be doing our best to develop products that make chat more safe as well as continue service to Java users. We feel that it is our moral obligation to the community to create these products, to prevent others from experiencing the same problems that we have. These things take time, but rest assured that this is a high priority for our staff.

We know that it is possible to evade our Java-only restriction.  We request, however, that you do not attempt to do this.  It violates a server rule of only connecting through Java clients and may get you disconnected from the server for an indefinite amount of time.

Best regards to everyone, and again, many thanks to our loyal users!

the liveHarmony Staff

For assistance or inquiries, please contact .

If you would like to generate a Java applet for your site, please use our code generator. Alternatively, if you do not have a web page, you are welcome to use our ChatWeb service.

We have compiled a list of alternate networks for those not wishing to remain with us.

If you use jPilot jIRC or other similar software on your web site, please as soon as possible.

To discuss this announcement on the service, visit the Loft. If you are already connected, type /join #loft. Otherwise, visit with ChatWeb.

For sponsorship information, contact .

For more information on our upcoming projects, contact .

liveHarmony is sponsored by linkLINE Communications. We thank them for their continued support.