Slashdot Mirror
AOL Files First Spim Lawsuit
Iphtashu Fitz writes "CNet News is reporting that 4 major internet providers - AOL, Earthlink, Microsoft, and Yahoo, have filed another bunch of lawsuits against spammers. What makes this round interesting is that AOL has filed the first ever lawsuit against against spam that targets Instant Messenger clients, or spim. So far spim has only affected relatively small numbers of users but the problem is growing, which is why AOL is targeting it now."
Is that Italian Spam?
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
It's kind of a cool MIPS emulator, but maybe AOL just couldn't figure out how to work it. :-)
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
Is Spim the low fat version of Spam?
When *@aol.com first started appearing on newsgroups I thought AOL would just be a minor nuisance, like a hangnail. Then I got *@aol.com in my email box like there was no tomorrow, and nuisance turned into genuine pain in the neck, like a cancer.
... and I can't help but think that they've affected the genre tenor of the Internet as a whole in the process.
But slowly and surely, AOL has done much to both transform themselves and the user populace into better Internet citizens
So now that they're taking a pre-emptive strike against spim, I have to applaud.
All I have to say is THANK GOD. ICQ was destroyed by spam for many people, and AIM is heading down that path.
the real problem lies in the fact that spammers have an incentive to send spam. if nobody would buy penis enlargement pills, accept online mortgages, and order medicine online, we wouldn't have this problem.
one way to combat this problem is look from the other end, we should educate the public and discourage people from doing any business with online sellers. consumers should be suspicious when such emails appear. i personally think this would help reduce spam
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Wow, I was totally clueless to the worldwide spim problem. The large corporations must have been putting so much span on this story that we weren't even aware of the real truth!
Technology industry pioneer (Genuity, mailorder.com) Rodney Joffe talked about filing a class-action suit against an SMS spammer way back in 2001 article 1 | article 2 -- search for "Joffe". Very similar.
I don't know whether he ever actually filed papers, or what became of it. Anyone?
Tom Geller
Spim, Spim, Spim, Spim, ...
junk? How SPAM/SPIM/SPEM/SPOM/SPUM (and sometimes SPYM) much different than them sending millions of AOL CDs in the mail every year?
This is AOL's stats, so far today - and it's only 3PM here on the west coast.
SPAM Blocked Today:
846,170,968
This month:
33,661,697,872
Instant Messages
Sent Today:
1,151,202,297
Members Online Now:
2,410,612
You can watch the numbers on http://www.corp.aol.com/
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
imSpam, spam i am
i'd like to sell you
c1al1s and a s3x cam
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
fools, r-t-f-a.
I've never seen more people correcting a mistake that never happened here on
Anyone who accuses the authors of misspelling spam is officially a fool and deserves to lose their geek license. Spim is a word, people. Look it up.
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
By which they mean anyone who ever goes into an AIM chatroom. It's so bad almost noone uses them anymore, even with pyboticide
why do we have to make up nicknames for everything? can't we just call it instant messenger spam? jeez.
What makes this round interesting is that AOL has filed the first ever lawsuit against against spam
Okay - against against spam? Are we in Newspeak now where it is double-plus ungood instant messenging? Is it for spamming now?
It's AOL, so I'm not sure which side of the marketing wagon I should be riding on.
This space for rent.
AOL will not sue themselves. After all AIM is loaded with their own unwanted advertising and popups.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
> spim is instant messenger spam for anyone confused.
I'm confused why we need another name for a known plague. Spam is Spam.
Rather, spim is spam. But, spam isn't quite spim. So it could be said that spam spans spim but spim doesn't span spam.
Cell phone spam is known as spem, and telephone spam (aka crank calls) is called spham. No really.
Spam on TV is called Stam and spam on DVD is called sdam. But spam in mp3's or audio is just called noise.
[signature]
That is, unless the rest of us get caught up in collateral damage resulting from reduced privacy or cloggage of internet.
one way to combat this problem is look from the other end, we should educate the public and discourage people from doing any business with online sellers.
I wouldn't want to discourage online business - after all, that is proving to be a more and more common business practice. What I would like to teach people is the difference between going to a serious store like e.g. amazon.com, bhphotovideo.com or similar that you know from real life, brand or web ad, compared to spamvertized products.
Getting spam is the online equivalent of a door-to-door salesman, with a virtual suitcase which happens to be a website. You're not going to them, they're coming to you. They waste your time, sell crap, can't be reached for complaints, there's no store, no refund, no nothing. There's never a reason to do business with someone that stuffs your mailbox/im client with ads. That must be the message. If you want something, go out on the net and get it. Those who contact you are the bottom of the barrel. Go on google, sites regarding the topic, consumer reviews, something, anything, search and find someone better.
Actually, this won't cure the problem - stupidity or bad deals. That can't be done. But it would greatly reduce the crap flowing in, if you know better than to go out looking, you won't have to deal with it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
ARTHUR: Old crone! [rewr!][music stops] Is there anywhere in this town where we could buy a shrubbery?[dramatic chord]
OLD CRONE: Who sent you?
ARTHUR: The Corporations Who Say 'Spim'.
[...]
ARTHUR: Spim!
CRONE:[cough]
BEDEVERE: Spam!
ARTHUR: No, no, no, no, i--
BEDEVERE: Spam!
ARTHUR: No, it's not that. It's 'Spim'.
BEDEVERE: Spam!
ARTHUR: No, no. 'Spim'. You're not doing it properly. No.
BEDEVERE: Spim!
ARTHUR and BEDEVERE: Spim!
ARTHUR: That's it. That's it. You've got it.
[...]
ROGER THE SHRUBBER: Are you saying 'Spim' to that old woman?
ARTHUR: Erm,... yes.
ROGER: Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say 'spim' at will to old ladies. There is a pestilence upon this land. Nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
This'll probably get me modded down, but I was once asked to create a spim Perl script for somebody (for money) and here's the source:
/; $key =~ tr/+/ /; /; $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C",g ; .= ", $value";e ep 1;
#!usr/bin/perl
if ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq 'GET')
{
@pairs = split(/&/, $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'});
}
elsif ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq 'POST')
{
read (STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
@pairs = split(/&/, $buffer);
if ($ENV{'QUERY_STRING'})
{
@getpairs = split(/&/, $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'});
push(@pairs,@getpairs);
}
}
else
{
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "Use the POST or GET methods."; }
foreach $pair (@pairs) { ($key, $value) = split (/=/, $pair);
$key =~ tr/+/
$key =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
$value =~ tr/+/
hex($1))/e
$value =~ s///g; if ($formdata{$key}) { $formdata{$key}
}
else { $formdata{$key} = $value; } } 1;
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "Sent message from $formdata{'sendername'}, to
$formdata{'recipient'}!";
use lib '.';
use Net::AIM;
$aim = new Net::AIM;
$conn = $aim->newconn (Screenname => $formdata{'sendername'},
Password => $formdata{'password'});
foreach my $i (0..4) {
$aim->do_one_loop || last;
sleep 1;
}
$aim->send_im ( $formdata{'recipient'},$formdata{'message'});
sl
print "";
It takes the following variables:
$sendername, $password (for AOL login), $recipient and $message by either POST or GET.
I kinda regret doing it now but it paid the rent at the time...
It's always a hand full of people that make things more difficult for the rest of us. AOL incorporated image verification in their account creation process, which cut the amount of spammers down tremendously. Why don't they incorporate it in every initial IM? This way a user has to pass the image verification to send an instant message, but the person on the other end doesn't and both will be able to talk freely, until the IM window is closed. Something a bot obviously can't do.