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by matt_kantor 3110 days ago
I share your sentiments but I don't think AIM is an example of this. I haven't used AIM in 8+ years but there was an easy-to-find checkbox in the official client (and unofficial ones too) to save all history as simple text files on disk. I'm pretty sure I still have records of AIM conversations from back in ~1999 in my backups.

Actually the linked article mentions this. Look for "Can I view and save my chat history?". It sounds like the checkbox I mentioned is enabled by default.