AIM profile squatting. Have we really gone this far?

The BBQ Pit
#1

Being an undergraduate college student, I’m constantly logged on to AOL Instant Messanger to communicate with various pals.

Lo and behold, I come back from class one day and see a friend’s profile completely gone, replaced with a link to - - - which, by the way, I wouldn’t click on.

As it turns out, someone somehow hacked her profile through use of insidious code, squatted her profile, and dropped a link to a website to advertize.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, she couldn’t remove the stupid link from her profile without strange and convoluted instructions, thankfully provided by the linked site and the assholes who created the website. It involves manually removing adware from the computer, and other such crap.

Here’s the kicker. At the bottom of the linked page, the webmasta says “We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you.”

What the hell? If I came over to your home and spraypainted adverts for a random website on your house and forced you to clean up after me, would my putting a note under your door saying “We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you” contrition enough?

Yes, we’re all quite tired of spamming, but this has simply gone too far. The lowlifes have actually taken to making their adverts stupidly difficult to remove from your computer through AIM profiles. I completely sympathize with my friend, and wish a pox upon the culprits.

Bloody bastards. :mad:

#2

Wowzers. I thought you were going to talk about people grabbing screen names and selling them like they do with nifty URL addresses, but hacking someone’s account is a crime. Report them to AOL and their ISP.

Esprix

#3

Soup_du_jour, I have a contact in AOL legal. Would you mind if I sent her your OP?

#4

Soup_du_jour, kindly do not post links on these boards to sites that you know are rogue sites.

For the curious, the site in question had inappropriate content as well as attempted to install stuff on my comp.

Link deleted.

-xash
General Questions Moderator

#5

Actually, the OP’s not much good without the link. My email’s in my profile–please email me all the information you have and I’ll forward it appropriately.

#6

Sorry 'bout that, xash. I should’ve used more discretion.

ultrafilter, I shall send the info along shortly. Good to know that the SDMB has connections. :slight_smile:

#7

Uh, the fact that the website is apologising may suggest that the person who hacked into the AIM account is not the same person as the person who owns the website.

#8

As scary as this behavior is, what really keeps me up at night is the thought that there are people out there who buy from spammers like this.