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Hi everyone ..
Chat programs are a tricky subject. I like to think a webserver is best at serving web pages quickly and properly. :) When you get into chatting, those are little pokes at the server over and over. It sort of flows into why we limit POP checks.. and any kind of request to the server really. Requests add up and hinder the major services on the server. But... I think there are quite a few accounts running FlashChat that I have witnessed so far, things seem to be ok with it. I'm guessing they have a small amount of users? I am not familiar with FlashChat and I'm not sure how it works exactly.. but I will check it out now definitely.
Even though we do not allow chat programs, I am very sure there are chats here and there that we do not know about, simply because they actually are running quietly and we are not getting any complaints, nor are we seeing references to them in the logs. You could say that we do allow them, that is until they cause an obvious problem. Each server is different due to the unique accounts residing there, so each server can handle varied processes. We do not actively run crons that search for certain file names and disable them or anything like that. We just handle issues as they appear.
We do have to put that section about chats in our TOS for when we *do* have to suspend an account temporarily due to server overload the chat creates...