Even before WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and Skype got famous, a lot of people have used programs like AOL's Instant Messenger but it appears that the company will disable third-party apps that have access to its network as announced on Tuesday. The AOL Instant Messenger users were notified that the older and less-secure access to AIM will disable at least one third-party messaging app starting March 28.

AOL Inc is trying to pull support for the MD5 hash function that is associated with password authentication and this function has been named Cryptographically Broken for almost a decade now where third-party chat apps such as Trillian, Adium or Pidgin are using MD5 in authenticating logins. It is still uncertain at this time if these third-party apps would become obsolete soon but the message rendered to Adium users appears to have implied that.

"Hello. Effective 3/28, we will no longer support connections to the AIM network via this method. If you wish to use the free consumer AIM product, we invite you to visit https://www.aim.com for more information," reads the message from AOL Inc. This was first noticed by Ars Technica and according to its reports, there is no message sent to Trillian users regarding this and one user wasn't able to connect her AIM account via Adium at all.

A previous AOL Inc employee told Ars Technica that he believes that one of the reasons for AOL's move has something to do with low AIM usage that it had dropped at least to singled digit millions and the OSCAR chat protocol used to operate AIM messages had become pricey to maintain. As 9to5Mac points out, this move will affect AIM in Messages on MacOS.

Howbeit, the service would still be available via AOL Instant Messenger, which is supported on Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android. Moreover, AOL Inc has disposed most of the team working on AIM bringing its development to a close as well as any chances of feature additions in the future.