Skype SPIM spam on the increase
Phil Wolff over at Skype Journal has an excellent piece on SPIM (spam over instant messaging) which seems to be rearing its ugly head on Skype. It’s a stark wake-up call to anyone who openly advertises their Skype ID on the internet for the spammers ID harvesters to find.
It looks to be a pretty sophisticated operation and it makes you realise that no matter how secure a system is, unscrupulous and unethical people will always find a way around it.
This is something which was an everyday occurrence on Yahoo Messenger until I terminated it in its tracks with Bot Sentry. Since I have now hooked up Skype to my Pidgin app, in theory, Bot Sentry should protect my Skype too so it will be interesting to see if SPIM manages to eventually break through that.
Talking of IM spam, I had someone on IM the other day claiming to be a hitman asking me how much I was willing to pay to have a “contract” against me cancelled. I laughed at him, gave him some good old Anglo-Saxon and then blocked him. I laughed at him because I knew for a fact that it was spam. The FBI has warned that it is on the increase and there is also lots of information on the subject on Snopes. I’d be lying though if I said that my heart wasn’t pounding for more than a minute and that my hands weren’t shaking. It isn’t every day that you’re told by IM that you’re going to get shot in the head - even if the person is in Nigeria and has no intention of carrying out their threat.
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