ICQ seems like to be the most spam friendly of all the instant-messaging services. Still, the spamminess has never been a real problem for me. Until now.
It started earlier this month(March). I got a random message from some random person.
him/her: “hello”
me: “do i know you”
him/her: “no,are you busy now,can we just chat”
me: “I’m not really in the mood to chat with strangers right now. Sorry about that.”
him/her: “o ,I’m so sorry for that,if you are happy one day ,maybe we can chat,”
Uh… right. A quick search on ICQ for the source number revealed that the user was a 20-something female from China, but who knows. After that, I started receiving similar messages: “hello”, or “hi”, whose profiles also pointed at China. That lasted about a week, and now I get messages seemingly from Germany or Russia. The first batch had profiles with “lifelike” names, but everything’s degenerated into spam. So far, I think I’ve gotten pr0n links, Rolex watches, Nigerian spam, and random “21-year old blondes”. I imagine mortgage refinancing and viagra/cialis spam are coming soon as well.
What’s going on? I do know that I’m not alone.
References:
Technorati Search: icq spam
Irritated ICQer #1
Irritated ICQer #2
Trillian complaint thread
I use gaim for my IM needs, and it annoys me that I these ICQ “buddy list authorizations”, which are allowed to contain arbitrary messages (like spam) come up constantly.
My main reason for posting is that I don’t really understand the sudden increase in spam. Did someone release a new ICQ spamming tool? Did ICQ roll out a new “random chat” feature? It’s rather odd that these strangers always seem to come from international non-US sources.
Here is the “Nigerian” ICQ spam I got in an authorization message:
—-
Hello. I am Steve Casey, general manager of the international company Le-Trans, and I have a wonderful offer for you.
We render services to companies that have international trade. These services consist of the reception of payments from the clients of the various companies when the client and the company are in the different countries. We save money for the companies by eliminating the expensive bank commission for international transactions. Only the small commissions for transactions between two banks inside one country are paid.
—-
Anyway, to whoever keeps sending me stuff, please stop. That means you, Steve Casey.
(Comments are closed since this page seems to attract lots of spam.)