Over at CNET News.com, Declan McCullough reports on answers from eight instant messaging service providers to a sobering questionnaire sent them regarding how well they protect users' privacy and security.

Their responses -- or, should I say, non-responses -- won't do much to inspire confidence among IM users that their discussions aren't being monitored by outside parties.

First, the sort-of good news (which, sadly, won't take long):

[H]alf of the services provide complete encryption: AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, IBM's Lotus Sametime, and Skype do. To their credit, not one service says it keeps logs of the content of users' communications.

Now to the depressing (and scary) stuff. CNET News.com asked the following three questions of all eight companies:

Have you ever received a subpoena, court order or other law enforcement request asking you to turn over information about a user's IM account?

If so, how many law enforcement requests have you received?

Have you ever received a subpoena, court order or other law enforcement request asking you to perform a live interception or wiretap, meaning the contents of your users' communications would be instantly forwarded to law enforcement?

The silence was deafening. While several responded in the affirmative to the first question, they all clammed up regarding questions two and three, with "We do not share details about requests we receive from law enforcement" being the standard dodge.

The most secretive of the bunch was social networking site Facebook, which flat-out refused to answer any questions regarding its Chat IM service. Further, McCullough writes:

As far as we can determine, [Chat] fails to use encryption to protect logging in (thus passwords can be gleaned) and fails to secure the conversations, too.

Seriously, what's up with that? I have a young daughter who wants a Facebook account. Ain't gonna happen.