AIM Pages and IM Spam
Being the curious little monkey I am, I signed up for and test drove AIM Pages the day it was released. I was very impressed with the edit and customize interface and with the look and feel overall. I even thought that using your existing AIM screenname as both your username and URL was pretty great… Until I started getting IM Spam.
Previous to this past weekend, I’ve probably gotten a cumulative total of 4 unsolicited IM Spams in my life. Now I get one every hour, and I can only imagine that’s going to increase. So far I haven’t seen anyone else complaining about this online, but two other friends of mine whjo signed up for AIM Pages early on are having the same problem.
Stands to reason, and, frankly, I’m a little disappointed it didn’t occur to me before. Sure, spammers can screenscrape your IM name from anyplace where it’s posted in some sort of standardized or predictable format. In that light, AIM Pages is a well-formed treasure-trove of prevalidated usernames. EVERY PROFILE has a valid screenname right there with the same label. It’ll be interesting to see what AIM does to protect us from this in the future. The not-too-distant future, I hope.
Comments
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For what it's worth, I'm having the same experience. I set up a page, and a few hours later I started getting IMs from spam bots. I killed my page after that and I figure the damage is already done, but at least my screen name won't be harvested by MORE bots. The spam has dropped off a bit in the last few days... Not sure if this is AOL's doing or someone else's.
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my contacts at aimpages say they are working on fixing that problem. i haven't gotten any random IMs for about a week or so, so maybe they were actually telling me the truth. hmmm...
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Hey there, I am working on blocking this kind of crap. Could you provide me a sample and a list of ids of people you are getting spim from? Just reply here or if you prefer email it to me. Thanks
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No problem, Ajju. The spam seemed to have died off after about 4 or 5 days and a dozen or so blocked IM handles. I'll send that dozen names over to you ASAP. Thanks for looking into what must be a monster of a problem.