“Help me like IM again” (spam destroys another medium)
O’Reilly Network: Help me like Instant Messaging again. [April 12, 2003]
“Help me like instant messaging (IM) again. I was an early adopter, but got burned.
Back when ICQ was still new I had adopted using it. It was fabulous and my friends & I had taken to using it instead of email. For each other anyway. Something bad happened though. Spam. By the bucketload. There were days when I’d here “Oh-uh!” twenty times a day with nothing but invitations to chat with someone cute and lonely. Right.
Despite clicking every checkbox in the preferences the spam didn’t stop. My friends & I eventually had to opt for using it less and less until we just couldn’t bother with it any longer. At least we had some spam prevention with out email clients or ISPs.”
I hate to say it but we’re seeing the initial signs of comment spam in blogging, too.