One of my Orkut friend Niharika Arora asked me on Orkut how to check if a person is online on yahoo messenger? I googled for sometime and here are my tested results…

First let me tell you coolest thing about hacks in this tutorial. They do not require a targeted yahoo user to be on your friend list! Now..

To Check Online Status:

This will work only if user is online and NOT into invisible mode. Invisible part is covered later… ;-)

First Official Way: Go to Yahoos profile directory and check target user profile. Say you want to check status of someone (where someone is Yahoo ID). Now suffix someone to URL http://profiles.yahoo.com/ so it will become http://profiles.yahoo.com/someone. Open final URL in browser and the profile will have status indicator!

Another Way: There are many simple sites which takes Yahoo ID and returns status of Yahoo user. I have tested http://www.blockstatus.com/yahoo/status-checker successfully!

This part is not a hack but official Yahoo feature documented here.

If you want PHP code to create a status-checker page of your own, this page may help you.

To Check Invisible Status:

I tested and used a third-party program named Buddy-Spy! Unlike above this requires a Yahoo account. I strongly discourage using your own Yahoo ID. You better create a new one! ;-)

Following is a screenshot of my test result, which says everything.

Yahoo Visible

Also point to note is that I was not in friend-list of Yahoo account used for testing! :D

Buddy-Spy Links: Download | Homepage | User Guide

Update: Try http://yahoostatus.ro/. Its tested, working fine and web-based! (Added October 7, 2008)

Related: How to go Invisible on Gmail Chat!

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