Yahoo! Messenger Spam

[garydd]

Over about two months, I occasionally (maybe twice a week) get spam in my IM that originates from a different sender id every time. Ids like hingreen_54, monroeparrish995, monroemack710, claudiovalenzuela139, etc. I look at the profiles of each of these ids by going here: Yahoo Profile Checker - Yahoo Messenger Profile Checker and it appears that a few of them were created on the same day of 12/30/07 and 12/31/07. Maybe a popular day of the year for spammers to create a bunch of ids. This tells me that sometimes, it is the same person using different ids to send spam. Also, it is always spam of these people sending me a link like for example (not my real email address but an example): Hi john_smith getaflinghere.com or just "john_smith wWw.VxXi.NeT". By the way, is "www.vxxi.net" even safe to click? What is that website? I notice that if I don't put parenthesis around the vxxi url that I just posted and have the url typed without putting parenthesis around it, a link is created saying "page has moved" instead of the actual url.

Every time I have got a spammy message, it has been someone (probably multiple people) sending me a link. I checked the online status from Let Us EnJoy - Msn Display Pics, Yahoo, Fun, Myspace of these ids and 2 or more were online at the same time, telling me that most likely there is more than one person sending me these links. Maybe they are working together and targetting only me or are they most likely targetting many people?

Is anyone else getting these kind of messages? I only have 4 contacts on Yahoo IM. Do you think a contact of mine gave a spammer my id or is it just serveral random people who have no connection to my contacts who are probably spamming many people? Are these spammers able to send these messages to 1000 people at once if they wanted to or just me? I'm smart enough not to click the links because it is probably a trap to send me a virus, spyware, or take control over my computer.

[sooflymami]

Yes, those spammers have also instant messaged me with sites before and it's very annoying..have u accidently clicked on it before?

[patndoris]

I do get them from time to time as well. You can ignore the user and report them as spam. If you are getting so many as to be annoying, you can change your preferences to only allow people on your contact list to contact you, but that obviously poses limitations as well if someone wants to contact you that isn't on your list, but that would be ok with you.a

I don't think it's a result of any of your contacts directly - these people just randomly spam as many people as they can. And of course you're right - do NOT click on any of the links or you'll be opening yourself up to not only possible malware, spyware or viruses, but also will increase the spam. I doubt your contacts share your ID but the spammers sure do!!

[garydd]

I actually sometimes talk back to them and tell them I'm not stupid enough to click the links but they don't answer . Maybe a while back, I clicked on one to see where it would go but I closed it before the page could even start loading and then I ran a virus scan and spyware scan but it didn't detect anything.

@sooflymami- You are saying you actually get spam from those same ids that I posted?

[patndoris]

Your best bet is to just ignore them and/or report them as spam. I only get a couple of these a month, where some people tend to get a lot more. I'm curious, is your messenger ID tied to a YH email address? I'm just wondering if people that have a Yahoo email get more of the spam than those of us who never bothered to set that up....just a random thought...

[Ven0m]

Actually I've heard that the report as spam function is broken and doesn't even do anything. I can't verify this though.

[garydd]

I have the same yahoo id as I do yahoo email address.

I have a couple of questions and didn't want to make another thread but:

1) If someone ignores you or has you appear permanently offline, can you still see them online by going to their profile or your address book?

2) Is it me or are the invisible checker web sites having problems and saying these people are online when they are not? I tried 3 different ids and it said they were online but they are not.

[patndoris]

I'm going to have to defer to one of the bigger YH gurus on these last couple of questions. However, status checkers are spotty at best, and I would never rely upon the information provided by them as to someone's online or offline status.

[garydd]

Is it normal for these spammers to use the same id many times? It seems they do and one of their ids dates back to 1/30/99 according to that id's profile.

Also, is it normal for these spammers to be online at the same time. I looked up these spammers' profiles again just to see their online status and 3 were online at the same time. Are they connected to each other and talking to each other on Yahoo or something planning their next move?

Also, is it normal to receive spam from the same id twice? From "jj1128" The one that had the profile date back to 1999. Maybe they will get bored since I never click their links and thus their plan has failed. I just want to see how much they will do it and look up all the ids in the profile checker, so I don't report it as spam.

I got 2 spam messages (about 5 minutes apart) a half an hour ago. One from jj1128 (a spammer's id that has sent me a message before) and a new id 5 minutes before. So they are communicating with each other? Sometimes it shows their online status as always online as if they are always online and some are not.

Are these spammers online only to send spam and that is all they are doing the whole time they are online?

[patndoris]

If you click ignore, you won't receive messages from this person any longer. They will be added to the blocked list. If the spam is annoying you that would be the best way to start reducing it.