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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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
ICQ made it slightly easier than other Instant Messaging clients. All you had to do was send a message to UIN's, starting at perhaps 1000 and working up to 10000000 and beyond. Spread it out over several IPs and several days and it's harder to notice. With AIM, Yahoo and MSN, you have to try alphanumerical combinations, increasing the number of possible combinations. I first noticed ICQ spam when installing an early version of LICQ (late 1997 or early 1998 I believe) and telling it to reject messages from users not on my contact list, then checking the logs for rejected messages. The log file grew several kilobytes per week. Windows versions at the time did not log rejected messages.
Of course they were almost 100% adult sites, mostly people saying "Hi I'm Lolita from Moscow U."