xabbott.blg

I’ve been getting a lot of IM spam recently. Especially from my Yahoo and AIM accounts. The easiest way to eliminate instant message spam is to go to Tools>Privacy in Pidgin. Then select “Allow only users on my buddy list.”

This doesn’t work very well for me since I give out my IM name(s) a lot. I don’t always remember to add people too. I will also often remove people from my contact list who I no longer remember or recognize.

We’ll I’ve found the perfect Pidgin plugin for this situation, Bot Sentry. I first heard about it on Makeuseof.com and it just took me a bit to try out. Bot Sentry will ask a verification question to whomever tries to send you message, unless they are on your buddy listed or have been approved by you previously. Here is what it will look like on the Spammer’s end.

Spammer: hi i want to spam you
YourNameHere: Bot Sentry engaged: you are now being ignored! Your message will be delivered if you can correctly answer the following question within 10 minutes: How do you spell the number 10?

So far it’s working great. It does have some small issues with at least two other plugins I know. Psychic mode needs to be changed to only display for users on your buddy list. Bot sentry will actually modify this setting and notify you upon first run. Guifications will display typing notifications for the spammer if you have it enabled. There doesn’t seem to be a way to disable it for just those on your buddy list. You can however disable the notification completely.

Over at the Ubuntu forums they’re trying to make a big push for visitors to adopt Jabber. If you don’t know, Jabber is an free and open instant messaging standard. The benefits would be similar to how email operates now. You could use any client, have any address as your username, etc. If you have a Gmail account then you already have a Jabber name. You could use Google Talk or add it to your current IM client. If you don’t have one and would rather not use Google to get one, just go to Jabber.org to find various Jabber servers.

By default Gaim’s buddy list and icons are huge. I searched preferences to make them smaller and found nothing. I later found out all you need to do is go to your Buddies menu and uncheck Show Buddy Details.