Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Yahoo Messenger Automatic Spam Message

This thing happened to me a couple of times now so, I'd just thought of posting about it.

A person I haven't chat with on Yahoo for a long time sent me a message telling me about this IQ site and to click a link. That raised some flags for me.

Friend1: BUZZ!!!
Friend1: u there?
Me: nope
Me: no one here but rats
Me: hi
Friend1: hey .. whats up??
Friend1: I just took a test to see what my IQ was hehe
Me: haha
Me: nothing
Friend: :)
Me: ah?
Friend1: thought I woulda gotten higher... got a 103 lol
Friend1: if you can do better than me ill buy you a drink.. maybe more
Me: that is normal
Friend1: try beating me... http://www.tiny.cc/quiziq I bet you cant haha.
Friend1: do it now while I finish up some homework (Warning flags start appearing here)
Friend1: gotta finish writing this stupid essay.. i hate finals week
Me: finals? (My friend and I graduated 6 years ago)
Friend1: BRB .. take that test!
Friend1: interesting
Friend1: so, how many yahoo ids have u got

I unravelled the tiny url link and found that it points to youtube. Though I would not recommend clicking on the link just the same.

A few months later, I got this message from another friend whom I haven't spoken to in a long time:
Friend2: BUZZ!!!
Friend2: how are you doing?
Me: hi
Me: fine fine
Friend2: hey r u there?
Friend2: :)
Me: yes, i'm here
Friend2: I just took an IQ quiz here.. pretty cool (Ah, this seems familiar...)
Me: i see
Me: you again
Friend2: got a 113 lol... thought I was smarter than that (Not answering me and ignoring the fact I caught him/her/it in the act - bot)
Me: so
Friend2: you should see if you can do better than me... if u can ill do somethin for ya
Friend2: try beating me... http://www.tinyurl.com/whatsmyiqscore I bet you cant haha.
In this conversation, as you can see, it is obviously automated. The format is familiar enough for most normal humans to identify this as a machine.

Anyway, just  a heads up to everyone to be careful of these tricks. Warn your friends or family who have not logged in to their accounts in awhile to change their passwords.

2 comments:

DWolve said...

I assume my id wasn't the bot? B)

swapnil said...

so wht we shld do