How do I prevent these whores from leaving me messages?

Factual Questions
21

Y’know, I was going to say something about the vitriol implied by the OP’s choice of word, but given the nature of the communications, “whore” probably is reasonably accurate. Although “pimp” would probably be even more so, since the person responsible for sending the messages (that is to say, the person who started the inhuman script that’s actually doing the sending) is almost certainly not the woman (if any) who is depicted in the pictures (if any).

I will also say that I’ve never gotten any spam on AIM, but I have received messages from people with whom I had no prior AIM contact (mostly other Dopers), so I know that it’s possible for messages to reach me without being explicitly authorized. I don’t know what distinguishes my situation from that of the OP, however… Maybe I’m just lucky.

22

Their wiliness being their primary attraction, I’d tend to see your point. Maybe check off the following boxes

B-girl, bag, bawd, bimbo, blower, broad, call girl, camp follower, cat, chicken, chippie, concubine, courtesan, fallen woman, floozy, harlot, hooker, hostess, hustler, loose woman, midnight cowboy, model, moll, nymphomaniac, painted woman, party girl, pickup, pink pants, pro, scarlet woman, slut, streetwalker, strumpet, tart, tomato, tramp, trollop, white slave, whore, working girl.

just to be cautious.

23

Just in case the OP is confused, let me clarify.

You aren’t being instant messaged purposely by cyberwhores who saw you in a chatroom and are now trying to get you to visit their website. You’re being instant messaged randomly by a spammer who sends millions of instant messages in the hopes of getting someone to hit his website…which might be porn, it might be a clikcfarm, it might be malware, it might be a broken link, who knows. It is likely that the spam itself is sent from an infected computer that was taken over when the user visited the spam malware website in the first place. Or it could be ghost spam…some stupid spammer is sending out millions of broken spams that don’t even contain a valid link.

24

They’re more properly called “bots” - virtual entities that exist only because AOL (or Yahoo, or MSN, or whomever) has released enough of the code to allow unscrupulous developers out there to create programs which can behave like human users in a limited fashion.

They’re all over the place on Yahoo. The programs are so sophisticated that bots can enter and exit chatrooms and make simulated conversation (although it is usually random and somehwhat meaningless).

The objective, as Lemur866 said, is to get you to read their profile and click on the links there, or to click on the links embedded in the statements they make, and thus nefariously direct traffic (specifically, you!) to websites chosen by the programmer.

Blocking them won’t do you any good. The blocking is done by name, and as you may have noticed, all bots have a random string of characters (usually numbers) appended to the end of their names to foil this.

Yahoo has privacy settings that allow you to ignore anyone who’s not on your contact list. AIM has even more options, allowing you to set up an acceptible list and block list, as well as going by your list of contacts by default. These privacy tools are your best bet.

25

Har har. I never thought that. What kind of idiot do you think I am? Huh? HUH?!?! Seriously, though, I really wonder what kind of person would fall for that.

26

Perhaps, but that’d still leave women of the night, ho’s, madams, escorts, and coochie mammas.

27

:confused:

28

Well, just blocknig the name, no, cause another one can get you. But, as said, there is an option you can check that will only allow those people already on your buddy list to message you. Hell, only people on your buddy list will even know you’re online.

29

How about skanks? Won’t someone think of the skanks?

(And what the h— chippie??)

30

Well, the only reason I thought you could be confused was because you called the spammers “whores”, so I wasn’t sure if you thought you were being IM’d by actual, y’know, whores. As in, people trying to get you to pay for some sort of sexual gratification. Y’know, just plain old honest whores and pornographers, rather than sociopathic spammers. Calling a spammer a whore confused me, since whoring is by comparison a noble profession, whereas spammers are on a whole different lower level, down there with advertising executives, organ thieves and personal injury lawyers.

Who would be confused by this? Maybe kids? Maybe grandparents? The mentally retarded? Maybe peope who don’t pay much attention? Maybe people who are in chat rooms all the time and just click things at random? Maybe people who click faster than they think?

I think at this point most spam isn’t “legitimate” spam anymore, as in spam designed to send you to a real website or get you to buy something. Most spam nowadays is an attempt to install malware, or junk spam that doesn’t do anything, or contracted out spam where the spammer is paid to send spam on behalf of a third party, but the spammer is scamming his customer rather than the spam recipients, or attempts to get you to hit “remove me from your spam list”. Spammers nowadays don’t seem to have any pride in their workmanship. Since a lot of spam is sent from zombie machines, spam doesn’t have to cost the spammer anything except his time…he doesn’t even pay for bandwidth anymore.

31

List of Internet top-level domains - read down to the “.tf” domain name used in the message received by the OP, which indicates that “Mariah, 18 from Cali” is using a Web URL issued for the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, i.e. is a spammer with a cheap, disposable registration.

32

Just wanted to add a different approach that I used to get. (for about 3 weeks, a couple of months ago) I would return to my computer and see something like this:
Hi There
Too bad you’re not there. I wanted to chat. Anyway look at my Yahoo Profile here and drop me a line.

The link was to a whore on Yahoo Personals with a very nice picture. Then another time this happened, I was at my computer. I got the first line then a 1-2 minute pause, during which, I actually tried to type (‘go away’) but the next thing I got was the “Too bad you’re not there” line. (obviously a bot)

I use Trillian. The messages came through AIM. My company started sending out these emails, “There is a pernicious, destructive virus that is transmitted via AIM. The virus is activated by clicking links within your AIM chat window.” It goes on to mention that even links from friends could be dangerous.
So I’m going to say that the IT dept plugged this security hole.

33

Or furry boots.

How do you know they’re whores? Maybe they’re just pornographers.

34

Hey, I bet we have some o’ them bots pretending to be registered users here on the Dope. :stuck_out_tongue:

35

Set up an account for AIM that’s completely different from your email address and from any screen names you might use in chat rooms. The only chats I participate in are anonymous–I can change screen names every time I join–and I only give out my AIM name to people I want to communicate with. I’ve never had a message from anyone I haven’t explicitly authorized.

36

I assume you’re talking about the “AIM Today” window: if so, there’s an option you can set to keep it from popping up every time you start AIM. :slight_smile:

At work I use GAIM instead of AIM, but only because it allows me to enter aliases: the day AIM allows me to rename my buddies I’ll go back to using it exclusively.

37

According to the Gaim FAQ, the AIM (Oscar), ICQ, and Yahoo IM protocols were reverse engineered, not based on any releases from the companies involved.

38

:confused: :confused: :confused:
Anyone care to explain the derivation of this one before my head explodes?

39

WAG It comes from the method of testing a tomato for ripeness.

40

You test your tomatoes ripeness with your penis? Where do you shop that they allow that?