"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.

Comments

Unfortunate name choice

[yerricde]

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.

Light on details

[mr100percent]

This article is pretty light on details. Where do they get your screen name? (I guess handle is out of fashion) Chat rooms I imagine, but has every spimmed person been in a chat room at some point? Or does everyone fill in their name in their UBB forum profiles?

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?

counter-spamming

[Stephen Samuel]

I currently still think that the best way to counter spam, right now, is to attack their business model. Right now, that consists of convincing poeple to actually start responding to spam by providing them with bogus infomation (random addresses and phone numbers, void (old or auto-generated) credit cards, etc/).

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?