Hello there

I recently heard about meebo.com and then headed to the site to get as much information as possible short of trying it out. I didn't try it out because I didn't want to give up my IM password. Short story is once I give meebo or any other third party IM clients my IM password, I am giving them carte blanche access to my account. They can login to my account without my knowledge.
So I think one way to help resolve this problem is for the IM players to create a password for use only on third party IM clients. That way paranoid people like me don't have to fear giving away their IM passwords. So obviously this password can't be used to view account details, change password, access other services that the IM player provides, or anything else. This won't solve everything but at least users can have some sanity knowing that giving up their IM passwords won't allow the third party IM client to have carte blance account access.