Skype Me/Spam Me?
I’ve been a Yahoo and MSN’er for years, but over the weekend I decided to give Skype a go, as a simple means of saving money on International phone calls to my parents. Hard times, credit crunch, you know how it is. Working here at Sophos it’s easy to get a little bit obsessed with spam and malware, but I genuinely couldn’t believe the number of spam messages that flew across my screen in a matter of minutes after signing in. Even working in the lab and doing spam shifts it’s rare that I see that volume of messages that quickly.
So why are there so many more spammers using Skype? or was I just randomly unlucky? The messages I was getting were many and varied, from women with cams and friendly wet bits, men with cams and friendly firm bits, to horribly poor fake anti virus alerts and even a long lost uncle who had recently passed on and wanted to transfer $6 million to my bank account. IM-ing from beyond the grave. I’m wondering if it could be because the userbase on Skype tends to be a little older, so the spammers are much more likely to find victims with credit cards than the largely teen-based MSN for example.
Not only was I getting these pop-up chats left right and centre, but I was also getting a flood of incoming calls as well. VoIp spam is new to me, and much harder to ignore than just text on your screen. I didn’t answer any calls from unknown users, and no voicemails were left, but I can only assume that they were recorded message spam, after my credit card or bank details in time honoured tradition.
As each spam message and call appears you can block each user in turn, but this is blatantly not a fun way to spend an evening. The only way to reliably stop the phone ringing off the hook and the message insanity is to configure your privacy settings so that only your authorised contacts can message you.
IM systems lack the spam protection that email offers, and it’s important to remember never to click on links in unsolicted chat messages. Spammers will inevitably be lurking on whichever IM client you choose.
Posted on March 23rd, 2009 by Zoe Markham, SophosLabsFiled under: Spam
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