A chat log is an archive of transcripts from

online chat Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet that offers a real-time transmission of text messages from sender to receiver. Chat messages are generally short in order to enable other participants to respond quickly. Th ...

and

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

conversations. Many chat or IM applications allow for the client-side archiving of online chat conversations, while a subset of chat or IM clients (i.e., Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger 11 Beta) allow for the saving of chat archives on a server for future retrieval. Most

IRC Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for Many-to-many, group communication in discussion forums, called ''#Channels, channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via instant messa ...

clients and many

IRC bots 409px, An IRC bot performing a simple task.An IRC bot is a set of scripts or an independent program that connects to Internet Relay Chat as a client, and so appears to other IRC users as another user. An IRC bot differs from a regular client in t ...

include chat logging to a local file as a standard feature. Web sites exist that publish chat logs, usually dedicated to a single channel and including a

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

. This can conflict with users' expectations of privacy. Some

IRC networks Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat an ...

have published guidelines on making chat logs public. Due to their real time nature, chat logs may be used to identify anonymous users by correlating information posted on different mediums.

Examples

* Google has integrated its own chat archiving feature into

Gmail Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active user (computing), users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clien ...

, which lists Google Talk conversations alongside email conversations. * Yahoo first experimented with online archiving of Yahoo Messenger chat logs through its

Yahoo! Messenger Yahoo! Messenger (sometimes abbreviated Y!M) was an advertisement-supported instant messaging client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger was provided free of charge and could be downloaded and used with a generic "Yahoo I ...

for the Web application, which separately saves its own chat archive when users communicate through that client. In 2010, the beta of the 11th version of the standalone Messenger client featured online archiving of chat logs, although the archive is only available and viewable from within the logged-in client. * bash.org is a website hosting user-posted chat logs from IRC.

References

{{Instant messaging Instant messaging