Microsoft on Thursday continued to search for the cause of sporadic access problems and disappearing "buddy lists" affecting its MSN Messenger service. E-mail sent to CNET News.com from MSN members indicates a sporadic outage started Tuesday that could be linked to Microsoft's Passport authentication system. Beginning Tuesday, many MSN Messenger users said they found their buddy lists of friends on the service had been wiped clean and that they could not keep constant connections to the service. A Microsoft representative said the company is aware of the problem but has not discovered the source of the problem but is "working quickly to identify it." The problem appears to be widespread, with MSN Messenger users in the United States, Korea, Singapore and Chile reporting failed connections or missing buddy lists.
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