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"Spim" is Latest Online Annoyance
Pcol writes "The Washington Post reports that 'Spim,' as people are beginning to call unsolicited instant messages, is the latest sign that online marketers will seek to take advantage of other communication tools, not limiting themselves to spam or pop-up ads. The good news is that it's not easy for spimmers to send unsolicited instant messages. Instant message providers like AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo have a lot of control over their instant message networks, and since they look at their IM offerings as gateway services that help draw customers in to their paid Internet offerings, these firms are already committing resources to making sure the spim problem never reaches the same scale as spam." Even without the providers assistance, many people who use IM systems are smart enough to limit incoming messages to those from their buddy lists. Still, there must be enough of a success rate to move spimmers to continue messaging users.
Remember those weblinks you used to get from strangers on ICQ? This is hardly a new and emerging trend.
But there isn't a hated semi-meat food called spim. The cultural connotation won't be enough for people to hate it. We should call it pork-rhinds.
write a program that automatically configures im clients to only accept incoming messages from the buddy list and sell it for 100$!
problem is, i'll bet someone will actually do that...
Now when you tell people that you have spim on your computer, they'll think that you have a speech impediment and look at too much porn.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
In the past few weeks, that the amount of "spim" on AIM has practically gone from 0 to 5 or 6 a day? Or did they only just find my AIM name?
Some new buzzword? lets have a study eh.
Seriously, had it 2 or 3 times and spam is inifinitely more annoying, esp since some spammers are getting more devious in their trickery.
(e.g. European commission members are being sent spam with reply addresses forged to be other members of the Commission. Means that instead of using the email or subject line to discount spam you actually have to check the message. Pain in the arse)
Have you had those ones where it is a bot pretending to be some hot chick? And at the end she tells you to come to 'her' porn site?
I don't see how that is going to get caught by a filter as it could easily fool anyone. Unless you want the filter to flirt out everyone who flirts with you too!
Wouldn't the nature of Spim (Spam via IM) make it easier for the Spammers to be located? Or could they just use a spoofed address anyway?
... it's obviously in someone's best financial interests to make sure it's not a problem, and they have the means to ensure it - if only it were the same with email...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
So uhm, what's your icq/msn/aim/yahoo!/jabber numbers?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I thought "SPIM" was a PC program that simulates a generic MIPS architecture processor, used in computer architecture courses in computer science and computer engineering curricula.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This new "Spim" has been there since first ICQ installment. ASL anyone ?
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
AOL/AIM seems to have it worst, lots and lots of porn spims. Never had a problem with Yahoo but I remember a /. story about spam on MSN.
Wouldn't it be harder to spam on MSN and Yahoo? Don't they crack down on unauthorized clients, while AIM has the open-source TOC protocol?
I think there's an intrinsic problem with that technique. Buy that, I mean, bayesian filter throw away content like water over the niagra falls. For sure, they're not stiff enough. I think we should focus more on developing technological solutions for better elections.
Anyway, if you want to continue this, come to my WWW site at dot love amazing tunnel with the dot com on the end.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Well, there's AOL messenger and Yahoo! messenger; AOL messenger MSN messenger and Yahoo! messenger; AOL messenger and spim; AOL messenger Yahoo! messenger and spim; AOL messenger Yahoo! messenger MSN messenger and spim; spim Yahoo! messenger MSN messenger and spim; spim AOL messenger spim spim Yahoo! messenger and spim; spim MSN messenger spim spim Yahoo! messenger spim tomato and spim; spim spim spim AOL messenger and spim; spim spim spim spim spim spim baked IRC spim spim spim......or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried AOL messenger on top and spim...... Well, there's spim AOL messenger MSN messenger and spim, that's not got much spim in it.
I don't want ANY spim! Seriously though, since when was this news? I remember receiving spam^H^Him years ago in ICQ.there's only won varIEty of solicitation left to consider?
there can be only won?
yOUR eyelids are getting heavIE. now repeat as often as kneaded: i will do as i'm tolled, i do not need to think about IT, that's already been dumb for me.
is still Shit Packed Around Mucus(SPAM). Not news, just another thing that must be legislated out of existance. Outlaw companies that sell product advertised through these methods. The Spammers will die off. Simple, easy, they have brick and mortar assets that can be seized.
I seriously would like to know how the hell you people manage to communicate. Do you just hope that the person you're talking to doesnt have a whitelist, or have you graduated beyond IM & Email and started using limitted ESP to at least begin the authentication ritual telling you to add someone to a whitelist?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
... my aol IM get forwarded to my phone when I'm not online. That's when it gets really annoying... Anyone know a way to stop this?
Jeeze, anyone that has left ICQ running for more than an hour has gotten "spim", since the "spimmers" can do just like telemarketers do, and go through the numbers untill they get someone. I remember getting a really 'sexy' spim message one time while I was away, my dad nearlly grounded me thinking it was someone I knew that I cybered with. :(
I have AIM set to only allow people on my buddy list to contact me. If you're not on it, to you it looks like I'm offline. Not possible to get "spim" this way, unless it's one of my friends sending it.
The only problem comes when someone that's NOT on my buddy list wants to talk to me. Usually it's not a big deal, they can just e-mail me and I'll add them to the list later. It is somewhat inconvenient, but better than getting 10 IMs a day telling me to go to porn sites.
There's a middle ground, which is asking for your authorization before it shows the IM window, but I never found this to help - it was always too tempting just to click the "see message" button to see what they were sending me. So that didn't really help much.
hasnt this problem always been around? I started pretty early with icq (7 numbers), and remember getting porn spim all the time.
...on my site. i was covering msn im spam, which is easy for spammers because they already have my hotmail address. i also hadn't given it the clever (yet somewhat awkward) moniker 'spim'. i didn't mention that all i had to do to stop getting it was to only accept messages from msn users on my buddy list, a measure that could possibly prevent me from getting messages from real users not already on my list whom i might actually want to talk to.
Last year I had a lot of spam from users on AIM, it stopped after a while, but I got a few a day for a few weeks, before it tailed off. I haven't had an unsolicited message now for over a year. The point was that the ignore lists didn't work, because although it was presumably the same spammer, or group of spammers, the screen name was never the same twice. I think what programs like AIM need is a one click button, that marks the person as a spimmer. If say 5 or 10 DIFFERENT people mark the same user they could be marked as a spimmer, and AIM could be set up to automatically ignore IM's from spimmers. Very similar to the warning level, but subtely different, because the warning level controls the spimmmers send rate, whereas this method puts the control in the hands of the people on the recieving end. You could also allow people to alter the spimmer level they accept messages from.
Email spam is getting filtered and blocked more and more by email users and ISP's. Gives a lot of hassle. This makes email more and more a ineffective medium for spammer. The people that don't have their email filtered are switching to IM because the anount of spam they get with email.
It's sad, but just logical that spammers will switch to IM. We should stop trying to stop spammers by technological means, they will find ways around it or we will end op with a hardly usable messaging system. What we should do is find ways of taking the profit away from them. Either by educating people not to by spamvertized products, by sueing their ass off or just 'SlashDot' them in some dark alley. As long as it possible to make profit from spam ther will be spammers...
ala futurama style.
everybody has to have a pair of lightspeed briefs, i know i wear mine proudly.
Oh no! People are SPIMming by instant messenger now? What's next spam on IRC?
Look out the SPICERS (SPam on Internet Chat) are comming!
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
fair enough? just slip on those bullinders, & forget about those who are non-compliant to the payper liesense corepirate nazis' scammage? you'll never miss anything/much?
SHAM = Commercial messages delivered via amateur radio
SPANK = Commercial TV in the classroom
SPUD = Commercial crop circles, especially in potato fields
SPELUNK = Advertisements on cave walls
Even without the providers assistance, many people who use IM systems are smart enough to limit incoming messages to those from their buddy lists.
Yeah, but it's not a matter of smart vs. dumb; it's also concerned about SPIM enough to take that kind of step vs. wanting to be open to chatting to new people. Part of the promise of the Internet is making NEW interpersonal connections, and having to establish contact outside the communication form in question is a huge drag.
I suppose there might be some tag that lets you launch AIM or whatever via a browser, but luckily it's not used as much as mailto: , so it's less trivial to harvest these addresses. Also, since userids are generally small, and don't come bundled in some obviously reg-exable form like URLs and email addresses do, there is less harvesting going on.
I've been using AIM (hi, I'm kirkjerk) since the late 90s, and only every once in a while is there any SPIM. There was a time when I'd get one or two a day (suspiciously, generally right after I came back from idle) but now its one or two a month. When I tried ICQ in the late 90s, it was more of a steady flow.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
You have how many users on AIM and Yahoo combined? 50 million? I don't know, but it has to be around that many. Even if 1% allow IMs from "anyone", that's a nice target base. Not to mention that, but the harvesting of IM-screen-names is starting to become serious-- how many times have you clicked on a link in someone's profile? That damned %n may be the death of us all. Of course, the answer is to just not allow IMs from people off of your list, but this just goes to show that we NEED some legislation that will take the "low-risk" out of sp[ai]mming. California has done a good start, but we need something to start with. Yes, I know that sp[ai]mmers are acting in many ways illegally, but there isn't much precedent for me tracking down a spammer by affiliate ID on a V1agra site and suing him. Maybe that's all we need...
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Could this problem be solved with use of the "Warn" feature? Spimmers could change their screen name and keep spimming, but the warn feature could be changed to warn an IP? If it already does, just warn the spimmers and they won't be able to send out messages nearly as massively as email spammers.
OK, how many times do I have to say this. I have never purchased or used ANYTHING that I have had an email (spam) Ad for and I never will, so you can logically assume that I won't buy or use anything I get an IM ad for. I don't care how many times you send something to me, it won't change my mind. So, like, just don't bother. Interestingly enough, I just allowed an old domain I used to run, to expire and had the domain hosting folks remove the zonefiles from their DNS - my daily spam load has dropped from almost 25 a day to zero. I'm being a lot more careful in how I use email addresses, so it really does make a difference. The ones I do find particularly insideous are those spider bots that comb websites looking for contact addresses - that to me is by far the worst abuse... Here I am, brain the size of a planet...
frankly, i never thought that the MIPS Simulator was that much of a headache. I mean, the instruction set was pleasantly simple.. a toy, really.
whats next? spamming web discussion boards like slashdot?? come see my sexy webcams at
.. which is why using the 'hide name' feature on AIM or whatever your using solves the problem rather neatly. Anyone who you want to IM with can still IM as long as they know your name, but casual browsers can't see you.
Disconnect, take a shower, read a book, you don't have to be *connected* round the clock, if some friend needs you that bad, use your phone the way it was designed and have them call you.
SPUNK = Pr()n ads
But there isn't a hated semi-meat food called spim
I propose the term Quasi-legal Instant Messages.
It may not be a particularly accurate description of the problem, but it provides us with a great acronym. I'd love to see thousands of people posting:
'I'm sick and tired of all this quim.'
'I get far too much quim.'
'Does anyone have any advice on how I can reduce the volume of my quim'
etc...
The next generation of this is an advanced elizabot to spam you on IM. The next generation after that is a highly advanced AI bot that you can't tell is not human. (No need for the kind of strong AI that would pass a turing test, however. The standard on an IM network is rather lower.)
I can't wait!
Still, there must be enough of a success rate to move spimmers to continue messaging users.
Spam and spim are probably the cheapest way ever to advertise, so the success rate can probably be very low. I think it's quite hard to measure success rate anyway.
I thought here invitation to check out here personal web site was a big come one. Sure the request for a Visa card seemed kind of strange, but then other girl friends I have had ask for my Visa card.
Hmmmm....
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
My idea is to drown them in bogus data so that they spend more time and money responding to bogus responses than they would with old-fashioned cold calling. It would also remove the advantage of increasing spamming volume because the spammer with the highest volume would also get the most garbage responses.
Thoughts?
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Or the "logic bombs" transmitted via TV in Transmetropolitan: a burst transmission on TV which gets into your subconsciousness and slowly unreels while you're sleeping - voila, you're dreaming commercials.
I heard of someone who wrote an IRC bot that pretended to be an under-ager, in order to get internet paedophiles to chat up the bot instead of a real kid ..... on the one hand it was better they ended up doing what they did into a box of Kleenex, but on the other hand it could be seen as a form of encouragement ..... Still, under-agers SHOULDN'T BE ON THE NET WITHOUT SUPERVISION ANYWAY.
"Still, there must be enough of a success rate to move spimmers to continue messaging users." I disagree. There must only be enough perception of a success rate for the spammers to be able to charge advertisers a rate high enough for them to turn a profit. Such throwaway comments only add to what is a growing problem. Darnit! I've gone and done it now!
"The good news is that it's not easy for spimmers to send unsolicited instant messages. Instant message providers like AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo have a lot of control over their instant message networks," maybe its just me, but in my block list i have over 50 screen names from 'sexykytn*****' if they really have any control over their network how can i be connected to 3 sn's from the same box? looking on the bright side atleast they didn't block my new AOL sn 'Sco Unix Sucks'
I usually don't get SPIM so if I ever get some IMs that I don't care for, I just add them to my block list an *poof* they are gone.
Causing Chaos Everywhere,
Nik J.
The strange world of a loner, in a populous city, drowning in society
I have been getting "spims" for about 3-4 month now (on and off, with on being a couple a day). It's not always obvious that the incoming message is a spim based on the user name because they are generally names like sarahB1742 and not makeYourPenisHuge@penis-growth.com (not trying to make a joke, just prove a point).
And finally, how do you run an IM "spim" filter? I don't want to only allow my buddy list to contact me, because there are times when a friend of a friend may IM me. Plus, unlike e-mail, there is a limit to the number of people on a buddy list. I know it sounds impossible, but having a buddy list maxed out at 108 users (or whatever the maximum number is) is by no means a challenge. You don't even need 108 people either. Almost everyone has at least 2 accounts (one for their home computer, one when they are out and about). If you go to college (like i currently do), it takes you approximately 1 month to fill your list, even if you are a shut in.
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
Or at least, apparently some company did something similar. They'd pop Windows messages up on users' computers every 10 minutes, with offers to sell something to disable these messages for $10 or so. I seem to recall a recent story on Slashdot about this company being hauled into court for this.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"SPIM" ca be fun, especially when pr0n spammers use bots :-)
The good news is that it's not easy for spimmers to send unsolicited instant messages...
Spimmer? that's a new one on me. Is it like a baby spam, not yet full-grown?
thelikesofwhich.com
ive tried Spim on ICQ, and it is DAmn irritating to be playing a sesiion of a game, and then be interrupted by SPIM, acually i just got one right now!
Frobbe
FP?
Today SCO announced the SPIM is a derivative work using the login that they SPIM begins with the letter 'S' (just like SCO). Darl McBride CEO of SCO announce that they would not take this lightly and were planning on sending threatening letters to anyone who sends or receives SPIM and to anyone with a name that begins with 'S'.
Boycott SCO and SPIM!
We want everything on the Internet to be free, but then we want to limit spammers and spimmers from doing their thing (me included). It all comes down to a trade-off between freedom to use the Internet as we please and being tolerent of others doing the same thing! ;-)
- I just moved 2,000 miles from home and its nice to hear from friends.
- Text messaging is so much easier than calling someone sometimes. Like telling a quick joke or comment, otherwise you have to go through the whole, "hi, how are you.. what's new.. blah, blah" for something that only takes about 15 seconds...
all these kind's of spam. We must be winning. They are getting desparate
Maybe it's an issue for AOL users, who technically foot the bill for AIM, but I've never paid a dime for the IM services I use, so I'm not concerned. ICQ has an "authorization required" feature, and I guess AIM has something similar, so at least there's a kinda sorta fix for the end user. Of course, I wouldn't want to be the service provider playing host to free advertising on my tab.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Turn your phone off. I'm curious though, why would you need IM's that bad?
For that exact reason. The phone is not an ideal medium for communicating with many people, especially if you live halfway accross the country/world from them. Maybe you have the cash to pay for long-distance charges everytime you want to chat about every little thing with someone, but most people don't.
Disconnect, take a shower, read a book, you don't have to be *connected* round the clock, if some friend needs you that bad, use your phone the way it was designed and have them call you.
See above. You seem to be assuming that it's practical for any friend that would talk to you on IM to call on the phone as well. Even if the distance is not an issue, they may work somewhere where they can type away, but the phone is being used for business, they may only have a cellphone but be out of minutes, their little brother/sister may like to tie up the phone for hours, etc.
Network providers could prevent Spim by letting IM recipients the power to bill or stall a Spimmer's account. For closed subscriber-only networks, the network provider could give IM users a "bonk-that-IMer" button. Each time a Spim appears and the recipient hits the "bonk" button, the Spimmer's account gets a $0.25 charge or is prevented from sending another IM for 30 secs or a minute.
Billing Spimmers would be a good way to raise revenues, but would be a nightmare for anyone whose account was highjacked. Stalling a spimmer's account might be a better way to make spim too labor-intensive to be useful (although maybe spimmers would just outsource to India or China and pay people $1/day to slowly send spims).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
it's obviously in someone's best financial interests to make sure it's not a problem
Yeah, and all those ISPs who pays for bandwidth don't have a financial incentive to make sure that spam is not a problem right?
Spam costs real money.
I already get more spim than I do spam, and have been for over 2 years now. Granted for few months it seemed to die down, but now it is without a doubt back. Being a college student, I use AIM (actually gaim) a lot to communicate with friends, family, and classmates - but not everyone I want to talk to is on my buddy list, so I can't just block everyone who's not on my list. I tried having it ask me before accepting messages, but what's the difference between getting that popup and an IM popup?? nothing really. Unfortunatly, I never considered SPIM when I signed up for mailing lists, forums, and things of that sort so my user names are usually my screen name. I'm assuming this is why I get so much more of it than most people I know. I tend to get 5-10 spims a day (all of which are porn - ranging from Fred violating Wilma, to Farm Animals Gone Wild), whereas with my mail filters I tend to only receive a small number of spam in a month.
I've never actually used Windows, so I wouldn't know this for certain; but, isn't there a way you can just get a command prompt, become the windows equivalent of "root" (administrator, I think?), and do the windows equivalent of "kill -9" to the instant messenger daemon? That is how you would have to do it in Linux; and Bill Gates is convinced Windows is so much better than Linux, despite evidence I can only interpret in the contrary sense.
/etc/rc.d/init.d (autoexec.bat, I think?)
:-)
Come to think of it, I would have expected Windows to have a GUI-based method for stopping and starting daemons and enabling/disabling things in whatever it uses instead of
Not that I'm bothered though
Indeed - I was annoyed to find that the acronym for the certification courses I was planning to set up was already taken
Certified Unix Network Technicians
So I'll have to think of something else.
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
QZTX is not takes, i nominate this.
e xact&Acronym=qxtz&Find=Find
http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?String=
... Which is why I said 'have the ability to' as well as 'have the incentive to'...
The ISP's don't own enough of the problem to make a difference to it - they have to rely on others. They are not in control and cannot solve the problem....
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Is it obscure? I suppose it depends on which part of the world you live in? When we did Canterbury Tales at 'O' Level, this was always our favourite part.
Now, gentleman, this gallant Nicholas
One day began to romp and make a pass
At this young woman, in a mood of play,
Her husband being out down Osney way.
Students are sly, and giving way to whim,
He made a grab and caught her by the quim
And said, 'Unless I have my will of you
I'll die of secret love -- O, darling, do!'
Then held her haunches hard and gave a cry
'O love-me-all-at-once or I shall die!'
The Miller's Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer
A few weeks ago, I got spimmed by someone promoting the new version of AOL 9.0.
Sadly, I deleted the chat log just a few days ago, but here's a rough recollection of my conversion with AOL's marketing gimp:
archer97: downloaded 9.0 yet?
mokolabs: nope
archer97: it's pretty sweet
archer97: check it out
mokolabs: no thanks
archer 97: it's a big upgrade
mokolabs: do i know you?
archer97: lol
archer97: no
Has anyone else run into this? I'd love to spin this story back at AOL (who apparently approves of spim as long it's the one spimming).
On ICQ I always limited my contacts to those on my buddy list, and yet continued to receive "spim" on a regular basis from those not on my buddy list anyway. I made myself "invisible" to those not on my list, and did everything else possible to supposedly make it "impossible" for me to get messages from those not on my list and it made no difference. Well, ok, it probably reduced the amount, but it sure didn't stop it.
I got ads for porn on ICQ circa 1998 along with ads for other products as well, but it seemed to be mainly porn. This is not new other than it appears to just now beginning to affect the other platforms. Also, I've had problems with MSN messanger as well. Not with AIM though. At least not yet...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I remember getting a really 'sexy' spim message one time while I was away, my dad nearlly grounded me thinking it was someone I knew that I cybered with. :(
As the AC allready pointed out, wth is up with your dad that he is going to punish you for something like that?
You didn't say how old you are but if you have a cell phone and know how to use the shift key and periods even you seem old enough to me to be able to "cyber" a bit. Course back in my day all our dads had to do was look the other way when we snuck his Playboys and such.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I've always wondered why IM tools such as GAIM don't offer filtering the same way email clients do. The msgs are very obvious and a combination of name, msg body and exempting my buddy list would stop most of them. An icon that lit at the bottom of the budy list when you received a blocked IM would be all you would need. Click it and see blocked IM's, otherwise ignore them.
I do security
then suddenly you get hit with loads more as they get there friends to "bonk" you.
Good point, beady, clearly it would need to be a 1-bonk-per-IM-per-recipient system, not a bonk-any-person function. Thus, you could only be bonked for what you sent by only the people you sent it too. I would also suspect that the system would time-limit bonking to the most recent message from that person (i.e., you could not go back and retroactively bonk someone for all their past IMs to you).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I have had the most troubles with "SPIM" my yahoo account. It seems like nearly every day I get at least one porn solicitation. In fact, they are getting pretty smart when it comes to porn links in IMs. I recenly had a bot that carried on a conversation with me for nearly 10 minutes before it 'got a phone call' and gave me a web link. The funny thing is that this bot wanted to cyber
- Think for yourself, question authority.-
Everyone is in favor of *personal* free speech. People, myself inclued, are not so willingly to extend it to commerical or cooperate free speech - ala Spam, telemarketers, spim et al
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
My first thought was, how is a MIPS emulator annoying anyone?
Actually, this is some bad news for the SPIM project, since now their name will be associated with something bad.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I know that there are existing regulations against telemarketers calling cell phones...shouldn't there also be regulations about IM'ing mobile device users? After all, I have to pay for each text message I receive after I use my free allotment each month...It would be annoying to start getting spammed on my cell phone.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
huh, my father in law's win2k machine had messenger service on and kept getting thoses popups. i saved him a lot of lost time by stopping the service.
Some like it with bugs..... I don't!
Anyone else notice a sharp increase in these? Up until this week I hadn't recieved any in about this month.
In the last week I've had to block about 15 of these.
Insert Sig Here
This is way out of control for me. I'm really sick of these tards offering their pr0n services. The only way to remedy the problem was to get a new account for aim. What sucks the most is the spimmers don't offer a way off their list, you can't just say REMOVE ME in the im. The best someone can do is warn and block them.
g us tina3210571,catheryn43210324n ette3210668,ronna76543210811,c amillejessen1K ortney3417,Kath erine2101198a rolina Moats2,Ginny54321042772,Hazel65432103548,Katherine 32102419 54,Sheila6543210134
The ban list this week(26):
freemanmiddleto,darcylydon519,marlabenally11,au
lucienguevara1,anto
armandina3210668,Christina2103501,
Hazel54321020336,Anita65432109107,C
Ginny43210226913,Camille Stacey 3,Sherry4321040112,Anita65432109721,Ginny65432103
Theresa321076010
Sorry not in a nice list format(slashdot didn't like it)
See what I mean. These Spimmers need to go down!
Later
freeOn
>but better than getting 10 IMs a day telling me to go to porn sites.
You: Daily free p0rn delievered to you at home is a intrusive irritation.
Me: Daily free p0rn delievered to you at home is one of the benefits of the Internet.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
This however, bothers me. Can someone help me translate the hidden message? There is a hidden message, right? Or is this like those stupid 3-D pictures where you stare, unfocus your eyes, get a migraine and expect to see a 3-D Enterprise and all you get is a blurry bump-mapped Enterprise-shaped blob?
GTRacer
- TGIF
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
until I switched what client I was using. When I switched to Trillian, my SPIM went down to virtually non-existant. Some of my friends have found ways to stop the SPIM from coming in the original clients, but for computer users, it's not exactly an easy method, but for Slashdotters, it's nothing short of a cake walk.
They already have a way to filter automatic signups... a person has to be present in order to create an account... so if you can bring the level of personal interaction required to an amount where a person can make more money working for minimum wage, the problem takes care of itself. I myself, when I get spim, immediately put the person on ignore.
If someone has twice as many ignores than friends, then you throttle their messages down to one an hour. Spimmers are not likely to have a huge friend list, and are likely to have a huge number of ignores.
Apply a decay to the ignore feature. An ignore that happened today counts as one, one that happened last month counts as 50% of that, etc. Otherwise they would accumulate to the point where all users would eventually be throttled.
When the spimmers coddle onto the ignore to friends ratio and just start having a farm of accounts that they automatically befriend, you enact the following: If a person gets a certain number of ignores (25?) in an hour, then cut them off for 1 hour... The next time it happens, you cut them off for 2 hours... then 4... etc.
I believe these steps will severely limit the amount of spim. It will no longer be economical (or possible) for someone to sign up for an account and send a million spims.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
"many people who use IM systems are smart enough to limit incoming messages to those from their buddy lists."
That may be ok for some people but not ok when ever you want to contact a friend of a friend or you want people to contact you. IM is actual one of the best ways that I get jobs leads I wouldn't want to filter those out. If all IM systems have warnings, like AIM, that can be applied to IM names by the client then we have a self policing system already in place. That said, dump any gateways that make it quick and easy to register screennames.
There's tons of sites out there offering "buddy services" like buddy dating, enhanced AIM profiles, aim forwarding, etc.
AimBuddy might be a good starting point if you actually want to get into that stuff.
Anyway, all these people (especially highschool & college kids) are putting their IM names out to these sites and I'm betting atleast 1 of the sites is buying/selling screennames like mad.
no comment
Which is fine and dandy for some people. Other people that run discussion forums, and all sorts of other things can't exactly afford to use that. If some user from their site has an important question, or message they need to relay to the person, but aren't on the recipients buddy list, they'll still be able to send the message as long as they aren't 'hiding'. Essentially, it can be counter productive for some.
You might say "well, there's E-mail!", but E-mail isn't potentially nearly as fast as a simple IM, and you never know when someone will check their E-mail.
i was sitting at my desk this morning, got an IM (AOL IM). and i got some porn "spim". i used to get these all the time on ICQ, just disabled the 'feature'. but this is the first i've heard about it happening on AOL's network (don't aol and icq run on the same network?) maybe Lolita4325 was right, if i just clicked on the link she provided, i would get to see naked sluts.
what about the GOD DAMNED, SHITTARDED WEBLOGS and ad sites that RUIN MY SEARCH RESULTS? it's the FUCK & FUCKETTE BLOGGERS that are ruining the internet, not this 'spim' shit.
Which is why I stopped using it and started using AIM. Of course, the inherent flaw with ICQ was that the UIDs were sequential and not spread out at all. Of course, there was spim, and then there were the morons that forwarded the "ICQ IS GOING TO START CHARGING.." messages.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I know that MIPS assembly can be tough to learn, but never thought CS students would ever get to the point of annoying people on the internet with it...
Oh, err, nevermind...
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
I'm surprised (fFor some reason... these are windows users afterall) at how many people get these NET SEND messages. of course they have no idea how to turn the messenger service off, either.
fFor those who have no idea what i'm talking about: on win2k/XP, you can send messages across a network by knowing only the recipient's net address, using a command prompt: NET SEND [IP.addr] [message text] it's slightly anonymous, if done right. and of course, i can send a message to you on your, say, dialup modem fFrom more or less anywhere. so it's a great, cheap way to do bulk advertising. and of course there are tools which make it very quick and easy to do bulk sendings by inputting only message text, and a destination ip range, like 66.66.*.*.
whenever i help n00bs with their boxes, that's the fFirst thing i turn off these days.
In reality of course, the messenger service is pretty handy. i use it to send quick messages around the house, stealthy notes across the classroom, and clever quips around the office.
did i mention samba 3 supports the 'net send' stuff?
I'm tired of all this internet spim, spam, worms and virii. Nerds listen up. Next time you get hired on by Darpa to invent a redundant communication network that will survive nuclear war *PLEASE* think about what your going to do about all the ads for penis enlargements.
digging deep into my 14-year-old-loser-in-his-parents-basement history, I remember the days when you could run a "phish"ing program in AOL. It would scrape the screen names from a couple dozen chat rooms, and mass-IM them a message saying "AOL billing has lost your password, just reply with it or your account will be disabled". I know we're talking about aol-ers here, but those retards would reply about 1 in 50. Eventually AOL added little red text to the bottom of every IM saying "we will never ask you for your password" but even then it was still very effective to just IM about 2000 people. The thing is, it only took three people "reporting" you for your account to get disabled.
So AIM now seems to have this mostly under control with the rate-limiting. Getting people's IM names will happen much the same way emails are harvested, forums, personal web pages, etc.
Here's an annoying little brain teaser. Imagine every ISP had standardized on something like Jabber and we didn't have this proprietary mess we do now with AIM/MSN/Yahoo. How would we provent spim then? Wouldn't it be just as subject to being raped as SMTP?
I figure that spiced ham is supposed to be tasty. Seriously, does anybody know why it's spoken down upon?
Take care...
Damn... Where's the "-1 Asshole" Modifier when you need it?
I use IM to do customer support with clients and prospective clients. I can't hide myself away without running the possibility of missing somebody. IM is, for me, mission critical and part of that is unfortunately keeping myself wide open.
Good news is, I don't maintain a profile. I hazard that's where spimmers are harvesting their addresses, because my IM screenname is ALL OVER the website yet none of my work IM accounts has ever gotten. My home account has gotten them...it has a profile, too. There's no real reason to have a profile unless you're looking to meet new people over the client...and it looks like some of those new people want me to check out their new porn websites.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Take care...
No, I think it said YOU FAIL IT!
I wouldn't mind so much if the links I got were some nice free pr0n with movies and stuff. But inevitably the links are to some _pay_ site. What's up with that?
Anyone who has played Quest for Glory 2 knows that.
I got a less than 1M number on ICQ, and I remember getting SPAM there too, from at least as early as when 5-6M was the latest sign-ups. This would be years and years ago before anyone used MSN.
Sure, it might be on the rise, but this isn't news, any more than "Usenet getting SPAM" or "Email getting SPAM". If they're starting to deploy counter-measures now, it's a sign that it is becoming unbearable - not that IMs have less SPAM than e-mail. Whitelisting (i.e. buddy-list only) is much more common on IMs than e-mail, but the price is much the same. There's certainly nothing innovative about it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The time has come to treat spam as a capital crime, and to treat foreign spammers as terrorists. I support the death penalty for spammers. Who's with me?
How about a middle ground between whitelisting your friends in an addressbook, and blacklisting your foes to /dev/null? Some kind of greylist, to which new introductions (unsolicited) could be added. A manageable virtual equivalent of "Hello, my name is Zsa Zsa". It could also help weed friends/foes temporarily out of touch with their signatures, but needing to message. How would such a greylist work? Some kind of "friend-of-a-friend-oaF-oaF-oaF" trust network? A deprioritized queue for review? A large, refundable micropayment required for admission?
--
make install -not war
Seriously, this is a problem that ICQ dealt with almost 10 years ago with the "only accept messages from authorized users" Anybody that is still getting this so called "spim" either needs to learn to read, or find a decent IM client.
</rant>
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
That reminds me of the last time I gave blood, and the Red Cross volunteer asked "Have you ever given money to anyone in exchage for sex."
"Other than my wife, no."
After realizing that she was about to stab me with a large guage needle, I decided making her laugh so hard wasn't a good idea.
Tim
Its on the screen after you login
Really, in my experience, I can't see the boundries of a quick joke or comment expanding beyond the capabilites and convienence of email.
As far as keeping in touch, I recommend a cell phone that has free unlimited long distance, so when you do want to connect its not draining the bank accounts.
For those of you that still want to let anyone talk to you, and not have SPIM, trillian pro offers a nice challenge/response solution. The other person/bot must pass the challenge before their IM's will be seen by you It lets you configure your own challenge: http://www.livejournal.com/users/opalcat/1462640.h tml
I will AIM/GAIM had this.. I should look around for the gaim solution..
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
He made a grab and caught her by the quim
And said, 'Unless I have my will of you
Of course, you're just giving the Nevill Coghill 'translation' of the original Middle English; the original doesn't really carry the same sense:
And heeld hire harde by the haunchebones,
And seyde, "Lemman, love me al atones,
(which reads as)
And held her hard by the thigh,
And said, "Dear, love me all at once,"
That's not to say that the Miller's tale isn't raunchy; it most certainly is. But that particular word doesn't translate with quite the vulgarity as Mr. Coghill suggests.
Belloc
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.
Any thoughts on blocking this? The fact that it continued to play makes me wonder what's going on.
It's still a shame, though. I used to meet lots of interesting people using the "Find a random person" feature of ICQ, and left myself out there to be found. Now, can't be leaving that up anymore.
We're not hitch-hiking anymore.
We're riding.
Still, there must be enough of a success rate to move spimmers to continue messaging users.
You could almost guarantee that if no one clicked those popup adds or if no one responded to Spam then the Spammers wouldn't send it.
I mean a few companies would use their advertising budget for spam, waste it all because no one that it reached bought anything and that would be the end of it. Other companies would learn form those failures.
But that isn't happening. Obviously allot of people respond to this advertising right?
Maybe Spam is just another example of our society attacking the symptoms and not the cause.
Not that I am defending Spammers I hate them and I hate the people who respond to the Spam just as much if not more so.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Don't equate popup ads with spam. But it's not suprising you do because you're probably a far-leftie anti-capitalist peace corp worker.
I'm sure this is just pissing in the wind but to help stop this, when services are created that can be advertized over, usage agreements must contain terms to prevent this abuse. Such as "advertizing and solicitation is forbidden and is an offence punishable by fines and/or imprisonment." Then a financial incentive needs to be present to track the offenders down.
There have to be some places in our world where we can chose not to be bothered by advertizing.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Of course, you're just giving the Nevill Coghill 'translation' of the original Middle English
It's true. I think they felt that the original Middle English was heavy going for fifteen year old kids.
But that particular word doesn't translate with quite the vulgarity as Mr. Coghill suggests.
Actually, I believe the original is even more vulgar than the Coghill translation, but you're referring to a different stanza. You're quoting the bit Coghill translates as:
"Then held her haunches hard and gave a cry
'O love-me-all-at-once or I shall die!'"
And heeld hire harde by the haunchebones,
And seyde, "Lemman, love me al atones,
I believe that the couplet that Coghill translates as 'grabbed her by the quim', actually reads:
"As clerkes ben ful subtile and ful queynte;
And prively he caughte hire by the queynte,"
Personally, I think that would more accurately be translated as:
"grabbed her by the cunt" as opposed to "grabbed her by the quim" -- but I'm no Middle English scholar, so I could easily be wrong.
Oh, very good catch, thanks. Of course you're right. Coghill translates haunchebones as 'haunches'. My text was from three lines below the one you were quoting.
Queynte is, of course, a much more interesting word. It means (as an adjective) 'exquisite' or 'pleasing' on one hand, and something like 'wily' or 'cunning' on the other. Middle English did have a word 'cunte', so I'm not sure queynte, as much as it sounds like it, is the direct ancestor of our modern vulgarity. But the modern word doesn't have nearly the subtlety nor range of usage as 'queynte'.
It also means (as a participle) 'quenched', and provides a nice rhyme for itself in the Knight's tale:
But sodeynly she saugh a sighte queynte,
For right anon oon of the fyres queynte,
But suddenly she saw a quaint sight,
For right at once one of the fires quenched,
There is clearly no sexual pun available here in the Knight's Tale as there is in your text from the Miller's Tale.
It would be very hard to translate your passage "caughte hire by the queynte" into modern English with the same subtlety that the middle English word provides, which is, I imagine a good reason not to translate the text with the vulgarity you suggested. I've seen it translated 'puss' and 'crotch' in that passage, with its rhyming counterpart translated as 'crafty'. But it still lacks the pun that Chaucer intended.
Interesting discussion.
Belloc
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.
It's not the latest annoyance. I remember getting these on ICQ (waaaaaay back when I still used ICQ) years ago.
"Hi, I'm Jessica, come see me pee on a stump on my live webcam".
ugh
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
For those of us who use Trillian Pro, there is a plugin that sends a message back with a request for a specific answer.
You can set it to say "Say open sesame to prove you're not a spam bot", and require the response "open sesame", or you set it to say "If you're not a spam bot, tell me what the 4th decimal place of pi is".
It's called "SpamChallenge", and a google search will turn it up quickly. (Because Cerulean Studios do not allow downloading plugins from their site unless you have registered Pro, I don't know if it's kosher to link to this. It's not hard to find, though.)
I haven't had much of a problem with SPIMs, so I haven't needed it, but it is nice to have.
For all the problems I have with AOL, I have yet to recieve spim on it. ICQ, Yahoo, and MSN have all given me spim, but not AIM. It's possible that it's a function of the fact that I don't use the AOL client, but who knows.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
No. If we have enough people doing this, it only takes each person responding to one spam a day. see my article on Kuro5hin for my original incarnation of this idea.
I need to add memory to my machine to handle the extra load caused by filtering the 300+ spams I get a day. Even then I still need to vette it to catch the occasional false positive (it's rare but still annoying). If spending a portion of that time each day to proactively make life hell for the people generating this garbage has some hope of stalling it's logrithmic rise, then I'm willing to take it on.
Even if it take spammers 1/10th the time to process my counter spam than it takes me to generate it, we have the force of numbers behind us (more than a million to one). It doesn't take much to hopefully overwhelm them.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
(Forgot to include the actual URL)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I get atleast 5 a day now on AIM, more than I ever used to. Its not that annoying because you can tell its SPIM before accepting it, just by looking at their screen name and warning level. Sometimes I accept them to read the funny ads though, heres the best one Ive ever gotten:
Fern876543210281: Hi emkman
Fern876543210281: Watch Fred Flintstone Analy Violate Willma! Never Before Seen Anime!!
I preserved the actual link for authenticity, but I don't reccomend cicking it, im guessing its not work safe.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
Simple, right? You just click on their name and hit "ignore" and it's not a problem anymore, right? Well, what if you had to click 10,000 names in an hour? It would be an unreasonable task for somebody as lazy as I am...I found myself spending more time dealing with these bots than actually conversing.
It is said that "Every new feature is the scratching of some developer's personal itch." Well, being a developer (albeit one with marginal skills and even less time) with a personal itch, I thought to myself "There must be a way to automate the filtering of all these messages."
Sure enough, open source to the rescue. My Instant Messaging client software, gaim, provides the ability to include modular plugins to modify the behavior of the software. Eureka, I could write a plugin that would filter out annoying chat messages!
So I sat down, scratched my head, and wrote one for gaim that attempted to filter out annoying messages. After a few revisions, I had something that filtered out ~90% of annoying messages, without any false positives. It was easier than expected, because most messages that we don't want have one or more common characteristics:
Linkified messages whose URLs do not match the linkified text (e.g. Click HERE to see hot girls!)
Multiple messages containing links
Long messages (more than 20 characters) repeated verbatim
So all one need do is check these messages for these characteristics and you've got a pretty good filter. Unfortunately, gaim tends to change its API from version to version, so it is always getting broken. But you are welcome to take a look at it and contribute fixes if you like.
SovBob
Even without the providers assistance, many people who use IM systems are smart enough to limit incoming messages to those from their buddy lists. Still, there must be enough of a success rate to move spimmers to continue messaging users.
I used to get these about 50-60 times a day, all porn related.
Examples:
"Armandina3210398: Hey aeiri! Armandina3210398: We took a video camera to the beach and this is what we got... Some of these girls are just the sexiest little sluts ever! We even caught one masturbating!"
"Elsa987654321016: Hey aeiri, Come see BIG FAT chicks for FREE!! NO CREDIT CARD NEEDED!"
Since I operate 3-4 sites, I couldn't really just disable receiving people not from my buddy lists. Well, since I use Trillian Pro 2.0, I just decided, hey, why not just install the Trillian Spam Challenge? After fiddling around with some settings, wow... that thing works like a charm, I haven't gotten any spim since!
Anyone on Windows and gets spim like crazy should get Trillian Pro 2.0 and the Spam Challenge Plugin.
From your article: ...``What would happen if everybody did this?"
Are you very familiar with Immanuel Kant's philosophy? I like his Universal Law Formation of the Categorical Imperative, the principle you refer to there.
Good article.
I know of Kant, but I haven't read him more than in a very cursory manner. My arrival at the Categorical Imperative was independent of Kant.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Cool. I was just curious because your post made me think "I know that! I learned that in Philosophy 110!"
It's also processed within -1 inch of its life, conveniently packaged, and was featured in a Monty Python sketch.