You've Got Spim!

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ck-knock from COOLKID6492," read the headline on an AOL instant message (IM) window that popped up on my computer screen at 3:42 p.m. the other day. "Hey, I'm a 19/f/Ca. Wanna come check me out?" I had a pretty good idea of what Coolkid had in mind. But just to be sure, I clicked on the Web link embedded in the IM and was promptly directed to an X-rated website, where I was invited to pay "just $1 a month" to watch women get naked in front of a webcam.

If you've been receiving more and more IMs like this, you're not alone. Yahoo reports that 2% of all IMs sent on its messenger service are spim, which is the new word for spam sent via instant messaging. A total of 582 billion IMs were sent worldwide in 2003, according to the Radacati Consulting Group—and that adds up to a whole lot of spim.

While efforts to curb spam in e-mails have been progressing, the spim problem is just starting to explode. Ferris Research estimates that twice as much spim was sent in 2003 as in 2002. Though people receive far more spam than spim, spim has a special ability to be slightly more annoying. "It pops up and distracts you," says Casey McArdle, a graduate student in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who says he gets at least one spim a day on his computer. "With e-mail, you just go click, click, click, delete."

Is there any easy way to stop spim? All IM programs give you the blunt option of blocking individual users (known as "bozo filters") or receiving IMs only from people on your contact lists. And all the services can identify and block some spim before it reaches your screen. But only ICQ, a popular IM program available at icq.com, lets you filter messages more selectively by blocking all Web links (most porn spim have links in them) or certain offensive words. You can even block any bulk IMs that were sent to several users simultaneously. None of these moves will totally solve the spim problem, but each is a step in the right direction.