It’s been impossible signing into Yahoo the past few days with my Pidgin.  Thanks to Celtic Wolf for this post:

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Note: The problems described in this document are fixed in Pidgin 2.5.7.  You should upgrade immediately to continue using Yahoo! IM.

As of June 17, 2009, Pidgin users are having trouble connecting to Yahoo! IM accounts.  Here is a summary of the problem:

Yahoo! appears to be upgrading their servers to a new version of their software.  This new version requires a new authentication method.  The latest version of Pidgin, 2.5.6, does not support this new authentication method.  The next version, 2.6.0, will, but it has not yet been released. Version 2.5.7 does.  To continue using Yahoo! IM, upgrade to this version.  See the Pidgin web-site for details.

The domain name that is used to connect to Yahoo! servers is "scs.msg.yahoo.com".  This domain name is actually mapped to multiple servers.  Some of these servers have been upgraded, while others haven’t.  As a result, you may see intermittent failures, or you may fail every time, while your neighbor logs in successfully.  It’s effectively a roll of the dice.

The following addresses appear to work:

• cs101.msg.mud.yahoo.com
• 66.163.181.172

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66.163.181.172 worked for me. To read more click here.

EDIT

The fix stopped working some time today.  I decided to download the newest Pidgin (2.5.7) and am using the following pager server: scs.msg.yahoo.com, so far so good!