Comment 2 for bug 416741

This may be a duplicate of bug #389322. Yahoo! has been changing their protocol which broke compatibility with Pidgin. Ubuntu only provides security updates for a released version in a particular distribution release. A new version of Pidgin won't be provided until the next Ubuntu distribution release. Try using the new Pidgin version from the developers: http://www.pidgin.im/download/ubuntu/

If you have trouble getting the key (keyserver times out), click the "Does this bug affect you?" link at the top of the report for bug #435193 and try again later.