Spim : Instant Messaging Spam

A new spam glossary term for you – Spim. Spim is the term used to represent spam you recieve from Instant Messaging Services.

How many times have you recived instant messages from unknown users. Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, MSN Messenger and ICQ, are popular instant messengers and all are targets. And anti spam software do not work for this.

So what is the anti spam solution? The most effective way is to enable the option to receive IMs only from people already on your contact list. If you send someone you know an instant message, and they do not respond, it may be because they do not yet have you in their messenger’s allow list. Ask the user to add you to their allow list first. But you risk missing crucial messages if you block unknown senders especially if you run support services etc.

Spim will get more widespread unless you are more aware about it. How to stop spam? Many IM systems offer a directory of users, with demographic information like age and sex. Advertisers collect this information and can send unsolicited messages. So protect your privacy by keeping your personal information private and reveal only essential personal data. Do not publish your im usernames on websites.

The incidence of spim or Instant Messager Spam is low as of now (for me at least!) and hopefully these popular instant messengers will need to form a anti spam appliance and incorporate powerful spam filtering!