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Security & Privacy

Interactive ICQ Spam

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I’ve received spam via ICQ before, but this one was different. It was inviting, luring me into conversation before springing the trap. I should have known. I shouldn’t have been suckered so easily.

Something didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

166215654: Hi!!! Its Emma :-)
A Kalsey: Hello Emma.

I don’t think I know anyone named Emma. She’s gone a bit overboard with the punctuation. And her grammar’s a bit off.

166215654: I just made a place with my photos :-) Interesting?
A Kalsey: Uh, no.

More of that bad grammar. And again with the silly smileys... oh... photos. No, but thank you very much for thinking of me.

A spam bot, sending ICQ messages over the ethernet in hopes of finding poor lonely men who like bad grammar. And I’ll bet her name isn’t even Emma.

Comments

Stu
September 28, 2003 4:05 PM

'Emma' certainly gets around. I have her listed over 20 times in my ignore list, along with many Sarahs, Ericas and Sunnybabes. They just get a new number and keep trying. The newest thing now is I get a System Notice saying that ____ has accepted my authorization request. ??? I never sent any authorization request! This happens sometimes twice a day for days at a time. The name is always different. Anyone know what's up with that?

David
September 1, 2004 11:02 PM

Being lied to infuriates my sense of dignity. Not that I'd fall for it for a millisecond, but that's really not the point, it's the principle of the matter, a lie is like a slap in the face. I am wondering if anyone has found any way to fight back against these types of bots. Maybe there'd be some kind of exploit or something to own them right back? Hackers, get to work, we have to take the 'Net back.

morigen
November 23, 2004 1:54 AM

There is no (real) way to hack or anything. If there was and you had it, by the definition of what the spam bot is (a normal ICQ account JUST like yours), you could also hack anyone else, and they you. The only way is for the ICQ software people to make sopme sort of improved "spam bot" reporting option. When enough people report a bot and someone checks it (automatically perhaps), then the account gets deleted. That way a bot like that wouldnt last a day, and would give the spammers much more work to do.

Joe
July 2, 2008 7:22 AM

Yeah same crap here. Whenever they send a message to me though, its all garbled for the most part. It says its name and has a bunch of symbols and stuff around it. So as soon as I see one of these messages I insta-block. I hope we can come up with some sorta way of fighting back against this. If we could spam them back that would be great.

This discussion has been closed.

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