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Tired of Yahoo! Messenger Spam?

You are not alone!

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

1st of November 2007, 15:38 GMT

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Just an example of Yahoo! Messenger spam

Yahoo! Messenger is the number two Instant Messenger in the world (behind Windows Live Messenger) and thus it's exposed to a lot of hype and criticism. Larry Dignan of ZDNet was the latest one to rant about it. He plans to follow up with Yahoo on the matter, as the company seems not do anything about the increasing number of spam that is being sent to its users...

except the banning of the reported spam sender. But what good might that do against users like "lkfdkvbvasjhgfvcsac6324j" (that's who I got my last spam message from) who are actually bots that just keep creating account after account? None, I can tell you this much.

Of course, there's always the option of ticking the "ignore anyone who is not in my list" box, but that might not be the best of solutions; after all, a social network is built to continually expand. With the click of a mouse, you could lose any chance to meet new people or get in contact with someone you haven't heard from in a very long time.

While some say that "Yahoo! users (in general) are quick to jump on every flashy, gaudy, annoying, stupid feature that can be stuffed into an IM, with no thought at all to how badly it might piss off the recipient." (anonymous comment on a forum), others are determined to do something about it and chose to start reporting all the spam, instead of simply ignoring it. And they are provided with this option by Yahoo! itself: "Yahoo! Messenger gives you the opportunity to report instant messages you receive as spam (also known as "spim"). If you choose to report spam, Yahoo! will be sent information about the conversation including the Yahoo! ID of the Messenger User being reported, text of the conversation, and your Yahoo! ID", according to the Privacy Policy of Yahoo! Messenger.

So whether you're on one side of the barricade, a fatalist that just lets it be or you've just decided to get actively involved in the fight against spammers, now is the best time to voice your opinion!

TAGS:

yahoo | messenger | spam

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User opinions:

Comment #1 by: James on 19 Sep 2008, 02:24 GMT	reply to this comment
would it not be a fairly easy to incorporate a simple "CAPTCHA" test prior to sending an instant message to anyone not in a users contact list? (like the one needed prior to posting here) bang! instant messenger bots become instantly useless

Comment #2 by: Maire on 08 Oct 2008, 15:50 GMT

reply to this comment

I think James has a great idea (it would not bother me to have to enter text to prove i am a human when sending that odd message to someone not on my list)...i get about 15 YIM spams a day and report each and every one of them as spam to Yahoo though i don't think it is making a difference. I even had to stop using YIM on my cell phone because of the unwanted messages.
Yahoo! needs to step up to the plate and do something.

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