untangling_the_web

DID: 4046925
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First Spam, Now Spim
You thought spam was bad, but now there is a torrent of what
has been dubbed "spim" or unwanted messages sent to instant
messaging programs. According to a report from the technology
market research company Radicati Group, spim tripled in 2004,
growing to 1.2 billion spims sent, 70 percent of which are
pornographic. While the number of spim messages is small
compared to the estimated 35 billion spam messages in 2004,
spim is growing at a rate of three times that of spam. Spim is
also more intrusive than spam because spim messages pop up
on a user's computer screen when he is logged into his 1M
program, making them very hard to ignore.
While many 1M users employ "buddy lists" to limit whose
messages they can, receive, spimmers have developed clever
ways to get around this restriction by illegally "borrowing"
identities or by persuading users to add them to their buddy list
by posing as someone they are not. Experience shows that
people are much more likely to click on spim messages than to
open and/or respond to spam, in part because spim is not as
well known and in part because it appears to be from a friend.
Celeste Biever, "Spam Being Rapidly Outpaced by 'Spim'," NewScientist.com, 26
March 2004, (1
February 2007).
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