Frequently Asked Questions

To put it simply, CrossTalk is a chat network, supporting many different platforms/protocols, implemented as what we call "frontends", relying on a generic backend that allows them to near-seamlessly federate with each other. They can communicate with one another, and share preferences (i.e: display names, PSMs, contacts, et al) with each other, and you can chat with people on other frontends without even having to install another client! We're targetting both modern protocols (Matrix, XMPP) and classic ones (MSNP, YMSG, OSCAR, etc).

You can use whatever platform you prefer, while still being able seamlessly communicate anyone on any other platform that is a part of our network.

Keep in mind this is experimental and alpha-quality. There are going to be bugs, and please report them if you find them!

Not to the general public. You can apply for access by joining our Discord server and asking one of the developers for access.

As of right now at least, yes! At this time, there are two developers and the project is closed source, however, we are looking to get more on board as well as open source the project; the latter of which will happen once it's avaliable to the general public.

It can either be a bug, or that we simply haven't implemented that feature yet, or that frontend just simply does not support that type of a message/has no equivelant. (e.g: MSN users can't send winks to Yahoo! users)

Some frontends are disabled by default due to them using insecure-by-today's-standards login methods (namely MSN < 4.7.2009 and Yahoo! Messenger).

If you want to enable/disable these frontends, log in to the site and go to the account settings page.

No, at least for the time being.

If hosting ever becomes too expensive for us to handle (which right now it is not, it's very manageable), we might open up a PayPal tip jar or something. However, we only plan to do this if things become very dire.

We will most likely never accept cryptocurrency donations, due to the rampant issues with scamming and stuff of that sort.

Absolutely NOT. We would rather disintegrate than run any kind of real ad campaign on our service; and doing so would probably cause that to happen, due to copyright laws and the like. We don't want to be orbital striked and knocked back to square one, do we? :P

However, we do run not-for-monetary-gain ads for many sites/projects that we think are cool. We also take suggestions from our users (you can even promote your own stuff!).

Unfortunately, our patching component is incompatible with Windows 2000 and older, so for those OSes you'll need to use a version older than 4.7.2009 to connect. It may work on 2000 with a modified kernel, however we can't guarantee anything as we haven't tested it.

As for Windows XP, this is due to it being incompatible with our server's SSL setup out of the box. To fix it, do the following:

• Update your root certificates. You can get a program to do so here.
• Update your OS completely, including all POSReady updates. Use USP4 and it's post-2019 update pack, or Legacy Update to do this.
• If it still doesn't connect, try ProxHTTPSProxy.

For Windows Vista, updating your root certificates should be all that is needed.

If you're on Windows Vista or older, see above.

MSN is known to be finnicky with passwords above a certain amount of characters (We believe the limit is either 8 or 15? Not quite sure.). In that case, please change your password to one under the limit.

Install this build of Flash Player.

Yes!

We've finally resolved the issue preventing WLM 2011/2012 from behaving and connecting to local instances of the server, and protocol support/development is now going full steam ahead. However, we're still in a pickle regarding how patching the client will work.

For an explanation, WLM 2011 and 2012 offload RST requests to the built-in Microsoft Account service on modern Windows, whereas on Windows 7 and older, it's a standalone service. This is opposed to 7.5 - 2009, which handle it directly from the Messenger executable. We need to find a way to patch it/MITM it without breaking Microsoft accounts on a system level (patching it in memory, perhaps?).

WLM 2011 and 2012 support won't be coming until this is figured out, but we are working on support for it's protocol in the meantime.

Not yet, however a generalized public-chats frontend is planned, which will support this, among other platforms. It will have predefined chat rooms, as well as user created ones.

Yahoo! Messenger requires all contacts to be in groups. This is by design, and we can't do anything about it. To make federation work with clients that don't have that requirement (namely MSN right now), we've decided to do that as a workaround.

Our IRC frontend requires you to use USER authentication, and therefore you need to use your email as your username and your password to sign in. Guest accounts aren't supported yet, but may be added in the future.