Skype, arguably one of the most-used instant messaging services these days, has recently had a rash of profile pic spam messages start appearing.
The sad part? Some people are stupid enough to actually click those spam links and get infected with malware. Yes, it’s the same “run this EXE and see my pic” crapola you saw 10 years ago.
You would think by now that people would have wised up and not click stuff like that, but I guess some never learn. Either that or there’s a whole new generation of IM users today that weren’t experienced to the spam-ridden hell that was instant messaging prior to social networking taking its place in the mid-2000s.
“People still use instant messaging?” Yes, and in quite large numbers. Skype is used quite a bit, the venerable Windows Live Messenger is still used often, in China the huge QQ network (somewhat of an ICQ clone from back in the day) is still used regularly, and in Brazil Blackberry’s BBM is still used widely.
However, with the crap spam messages like the one going through Skype right now, this is just a reminder to some of why they stopped using instant messaging in the first place. ![]()

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