Live Messenger 8.1

The first update to Windows Live Messenger was previewed on October 30, 2006, with the release of Beta 1 of version 8.1. No major changes were made, but several minor changes were included. The changes and additions included the addition of the roaming identity feature (so that a user's display name and picture would appear on any computer), a new contact card appearance, a "recently used" list for the emoticon, wink, display picture and background menus, an SMS phone book in the main menu allowing the association and editing of a phone number to the contact and allowing text messaging to a contact, a "sign out" button the status menu, a "report abuse" option in the help menu, the ability to chat with Yahoo users introduced with 8.1, and improvements to user status on Windows Vista, so that Windows Live Messenger automatically changes to "Busy" when in presentation mode. A minor update, the Windows Live Messenger 8.1 Beta 1 Refresh, was released on December 13, 2006,and fixed bugs that were causing some people to be unable to sign in and others unable to see their contact list. The final version 8.1 was released on January 29, 2007. No changes were made from the Beta 1 Refresh. All versions of Windows Live Messenger below version 8.1 were rendered obsolete on September 12, 2007, due to a security issue identified when a user accepts a webcam or video chat invitation from an attacker.

On September 12, 2007, the Windows Live Messenger blog posted a fix that resolved a security problem. It reported of a security vulnerability in versions of Messenger older than 8.1, that the released fix would resolve. This led to an auto-update being released to all older versions. Versions running on Windows 2000 and below were required to update to a new version of MSN Messenger 7.0, and versions running on Windows XP and above were required to update to Windows Live Messenger 8.1.

On August 27, 2009, the Windows Live Messenger blog posted that due to a security problem, all users of versions 8.1 and newer need to update to the latest version, 14.0.8089. The mandatory upgrade requirement will be fully phased in by late October 2009 and began on September 15, 2009.

Resource: Wikipedia