What’s With the AIM Spam Surge?

Every time I check my Yahoo! Mail account, lately, I have three or four new spam messages from someone with an aim.com e-mail address. Almost all of them have a subject similar to “Private message for you”.

Is anyone else experiencing this issue? It only seems to be happening with my Yahoo! Mail account. None of my other e-mail addresses are receiving these strange messages.

14 Responses

  • Allen

    I am getting pounded by spam on Yahoo – it all goes in the “spam” folder but am getting between 250-300 a day – all with .info domains and none with remove info – it appears to all be coming from one company as far as I can tell.

    Though I haven’t seen any AIM spam as of yet. I do get chat messages in a yahoo tab from time to time.

  • Strange.

    These messages are not being filtered out by my Yahoo! Mail spam filter. Instead, they are being delivered directly to my inbox.

    I, too, receive at least 250 new spam messages each day in my Yahoo! spam folder, but they come from all kinds of different sources. Still, it’s better to deal with those messages through Yahoo! Mail than e-mail clients like Outlook, as Yahoo!’s spam filter is extremely accurate and effective. That’s why I use my Yahoo! account to sign up for most services, rather than any of my other e-mail accounts.

  • JN

    I’m seeing the AIM spam in my MobileMe (Apple) inbox as well. The problem is that the headers aren’t forged — this stuff is really being sent from AIM Mail, and thus it doesn’t trip spam flags. I’d just as soon block ALL mail from @aim.com — nobody I care to hear from uses that service.

  • Sinclair

    My ptd.net yahoo.com and hotmail.com are getting blasted with private messages from aim.com

    I just called my ptd.net paying service and unfortunately they can’t do anything about it… haven’t you heard of blacklisting? They responded they did not want to block a good sender. I told them I did not care for anybody from that ISP and they still did not do anything about it. Aaargh!!! Help!!!

  • I finally got around to checking the mail options in my Yahoo! mail account.

    I figured out that it’s very easy to block entire domains with Yahoo! mail (just add the domain to your blocked address list), so I added mail.ru and aim.com to the list. We’ll see how well it works.

    I also figured out that you can choose to block chat requests from anyone that’s not in your contact list, so I went ahead and did that, too.

    I hope that helps other people having these problems, at least with Yahoo! mail.

  • Wayne

    I don’t remember seeing anything like the aim.com surge of spam. It started for me just a month or six weeks ago, and has now spread from Yahoo to another email account. I visited their website, tried to email their support folks to ask what’s up – and the email bounced back as undeliverable. Apparently nobody’s minding the store at AOL Instant Messenger, so I guess it will take Congressional investigators six months and lots of taxpayer dollars to haul some exec up for hearings to say that they’re working on it.

  • Annie

    Came across this thread by accident and thought I’d add my two pen’orth (or two cents worth for the north americans.) Agree with Curtiss. BLOCK AIM!
    As you say Wayne, nobody is minding the store at AIM so I blocked all messages from aim.com. BTYahoo’s filter diverts the rest to the spam folder that’s emptied automatically once a month. Whenever a spam email is downloaded and I go to the web site to mark it as spam, I’m amazed at the volume that’s been diverted.
    When I first set the filters, I scanned the spam folder regularly, just in case an email had been erroneously diverted, but I don’t even do that now.
    Be brave! Block emails from aim.com.

  • Ivan G.

    Me too — an aim.com barrage — 3 to 6 every day at least. Are there legitimate folks using aim.com? I’m also thinking why not block all aim messages.

  • Sean

    I don’t have any of these problems, but I was once a user of AOL and do know some people who use or have used AOL. There must be some legit people out there using the service, but outside of that, the best solution is indeed to block them and ignore the spam folder.

    …and to think I found this article looking up how to convert RGB to hex for my e-Commerce class…

  • Mike

    AIM has the nerve to pride themselves on a great spam filter for those that subscribe but they do absolutely nothing for the rest of the WWW that is getting bombed by spammers using AIM as their launching pad. Eventually everyone in the real world (outside AOL) will simply block all incoming mail from *@aim.com and those using the service will not be able to communicate with anyone.

  • Bob

    I too have been getting lots of AIM.com spam. I blocked the the AIM domain, but my email allows me to also redirect the spam to an email address of my choosing. I chose to redirect it to [email protected]. If any of the rest of you have this opportunity, I say forward it all … to [email protected]. Perhaps then they will find a solution.

    • Popo

      I use AOL e-mail and also get 5+ Spam messages from AIM accounts. Does anyone know how to block all e-mails coming from AIM accounts on the AOL e-mail system? It’s really annoying!

  • Tina

    I tried to forward the aim spam to [email protected] and the email was kicked back as undeliverable! Does it no longer work? Is there any other way to report them for continuously sending me spam?! It’s really rather frustrating!

  • Mel

    I was not having any trouble sending and receiving emails with an online friend who is using aim.com and aol.com a/c. at least not in the beginning. A few days later I received a spam email from her, and this spam email was sent to all her contacts. I didn’t know it was spam, so I clicked on the URL in the e-mail and it’s a viagra selling stuffs. I closed it and was going to ask her about it, but my e-mail to her bounced. The error message was 554 HVU B2, which means my e-mail contains URL or IP that contains complaints LOL it was HER aim.com and aol.com emails that sent me the spam, and now my e-mail a/c is the one people have been complaining about???
    I still receive emails from her but I have no way of replying. I only know her email and she is a nice person, I am sure she didn’t send any of these spams. It’s as if the whole thing is done to block her from communicating with any of her contacts. Well they might have her phone # but I don’t. I changed email a/c but I still can’t reach her. I hope one of her contacts can reach her outside aol and aim, or else she will practically lose communication with everyone.