A computer topic

For the last week or so, I have been getting AOL PMs from unfamiliar nyms. I have been ignoring them, and one persisted over four days, partly out of fear of getting involved in net bullshit, and partly thinking it may be a way to spread a virus or at least cultivate addies for spam purposes.

I've had people I knew contact me in the past using AOL addies that are not variations on waht I know them as elsewhere, but after all that crap that went on, plus the viral threat, I'm a bit wary.

Any hints? As I said, this has only started recently. By the way, it's always some sort of female type nym, which makes me wonder about the possibility of spam and/or virii, them thinking that would make me more likely to click on it.

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Originally posted by Stacey.:
In Preferences you can adjust the settings so you only receive IM's from contacts on your list, otherwise you're open to every Tom, Dick or Harry.

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<font size="3" face="Arial">How about SexyJenny and BabyDancr(both with other elements added)? [img]wink.gif[/img]

Really though, as I asked before, can a virus be transmitted that way? I'd gotten PMs from people who I knew under an entirely different nym, as I'm sure you have, no problems there.I'm just wondering, especially since one of them persisted over four days.

Maybe they're probing for a back door, lol. i.e. trying to find an open port to acccess your pc with a 'trojan' virus. It's more than likely just harmless spammers, but you never know. If you have an up-to-date firewall, anti-virus and spyware detector you should be ok.

In Preferences you can adjust the settings so you only receive IM's from contacts on your list, otherwise you're open to every Tom, Dick or Harry.

it's simple spam. in the messages you will probably find a "hey [screenname], click here to see my naked pictures" or something of the sort. a virus can not be simply passed through a message without you initiating it by either downloading a file or clicking on a hyperlink.
now if you do download something or click on a link in one of the spam messages and you do get infected, it's your own fault. you usually get this kind of messanger spam when you spend time in 'chat rooms' if you know what i am saying. a spambot will record your screenname when you enter the room and add you to it's distribution list.

while probing does sound like a nice answer, it would be useless to probe through a messenger since we already know that port is open. to probe a computer you would send connect requests on each port sequentially and make a note of which ports responded or seem open to more in-depth probing. most port scanners though are configurable to scan a certain range of ports. being that there are over 65,000 ports in your computer it would take a while to scan all 65,536 ports. the first 1024 ports are common ports (ftp, smtp, dns, etc..) and an unprivileged program will fail connecting through them so thay are usually not probed. (yahoo runs on port 5010 for those who care) for the record, your computer probably gets probed at least once a day, you never know it. it is all done on the OS level.

but back to your question jay, stay out of the chat rooms and you will stop recieving the spam lol. joking of course. they are only spam, just put them on block or ignore or whatever the option is.

I know what you mean, and I don't go to those [img]wink.gif[/img] chats, never did. In fact, I haven't been in a chat, room or private, for some time now.

Sooo, where would they get my nym from? BTW...It's not yahoo!.

You can get that stuff by just setting up a profile on any of the messengers and being listed in their directories.

If you don't want spam don't set up a profile.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Stacey.:
You can get that stuff by just setting up a profile on any of the messengers and being listed in their directories.

If you don't want spam don't set up a profile.

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<font size="3" face="Arial">How do I check if I have a profile or not? It's AOL.

If you use AIM it's dead simple. On the contact list window click 'My AIM' followed by 'Edit Profile'.

I'm not sure about the whole AOL thing cos I don't subscribe to that.

I'm thinking it's highly unlikely that you have a profile. You'd know if you'd set one up or not. Sounds like your screen name has been grabbed from a chatroom or a member's directory.

If the IM's get too intrusive, review your privacy settings in 'Preferences'.