Spam Over IM Hits Skype

Filed in archive Spam on March 6, 2008

Dameon over at the VOIP blog has an interesting post about spam via IM on Skype. Users receive an IM from some with a sexy name and picture asks to be added to your contact list. Of course it isn't really a beautiful woman or handsome man wanting to get to know you-it's a spammer, or more likely a spam bot, and if you comply, you're in for a barrage of spam, porn or worse. Protecting yourself is easy-block messages from anyone who isn't on your contact list.

Spam over IM is far from new. Anyone who has AOL's instant messaging service has experienced being spammed over it at least once. Spammers use bots to send out huge amounts of IM's. The same technique is used in chat rooms-most often to promote dating and porn sites. Seems like they've now moved on to Skype.

Read this informative post on the Skype Journal to read more about this technique and how to protect yourself and your users from it.