Have you ever found yourself booted out of Yahoo Chat and you have no idea why? It may be that you have crossed paths with a so-called “Yahoo booter”. Yahoo booters are people who, for whatever reason, will flood your yahoochat session with data, causing you to get dumped out of Yahoochat. Yahoo booting is done typically to annoy or harass the Yahoo booters target.

If you use either AOL instant messenger or iChat, chances are good that you have started getting the “AIM Pages Invite” spam from the AIMPagesInvite AOL instant messenger buddy. Here’s what this is all about.

If you use MSN Messenger or email, chances are that at some point you will find yourself using, or wanting, emoticons for MSN. Emoticons are emotional graphics – visual ways to express the way you feel when words alone just aren’t enough. Of course, you probably knew that. But what you may not have known is just how many emoticons for MSN there are (such as alien, 3d, and even erotic adult emoticons!) – or where to get them. Or how to create or make your own emoticons for MSN!

A new service announced by AOL, called Skyhook, adds a new “Near Me” buddy group to your AIM buddies. This is intended to show you your nearby buddies or local buddies. Based on where you and your AIM buddies are located, those who are within a certain number of miles of you will show up in your “Near Me” buddy group.

Now here’s a big surprise – oh, wait, no it isn’t – a recent study found that SMS (text messaging) has made it easier for people to lie.

Are you one of those people for whom iChat audio and video chatting used to work, but suddenly it has stopped working, for no apparent reason? Are you getting “user has declined your invitation” or “communications error” errors, or maybe even the dreaded “error -8”? Have you changed nothing at all on your end, but suddenly you simply can’t audio chat or video chat with some people – or maybe anybody?

Well, you’re not alone.

A bank in Massachusetts has started the trend of allowing customer to instant message their bankers via AIM! Leader Bank customers are thrilled with the free service, and the best part – no more voicemail hell!

The files wgavn.exe and dcpromo.log are really the Cuebot-K worm, also known as W32/Cuebot-K, Backdoor.Win32.IRCBot.st, and Win32/IRCBot.OO. Cuebot-k is a new worm that masks itself as a “Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Notification”, part of Windows Authentication Software (WAS). But it’s really a nasty worm which gives control of your system over to the bad guys. It’s spreading via AOL Instant Messenger (AIM).

The BlackAngel.b worm infects through MSN Messenger, offering the Fantasma video which warns that “en el 1er dia te espantas”, meaning that on the first day you get scared, as indeed you should. The worm sends itself through MSN Messenger messages saying things such as “jaja look a that” or “mira este video”.

The most recent outbreak of violence connected to the Danish publication of what Muslims consider to be a blasphemus cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed was provoked by rumours spread by SMS text messages.

People using Yahoo Messenger are receiving Yahoo instant message phishes which are realistic enough to reel in their victims. The phishy Yahoo messenger messages offer up a link to what appears to be a Yahoo Photos website, saying “click on this website.”

If you thought that SMS text messages were primarily the domain of teenagers who seem to speak in electronic tongues, using l33t speak, think again.

By automatically adding commercial buddies to users’ AOL Instant Messanger (a/k/a AOL IM, AOL Chat, and AOL Message) buddy list, AOL has alienated the affections of their AOL Instant Messanger users.

A new AOL Instant Messenger worm, SDBot.add, installs the rootkit Lockx.exe on your computer. In addition to the root kit, the AIM worm changes your searchpage to https://web.archive.org/web/20070525203505/http://www.eza1netsearch.com:80/sp2.php at eza1netsearch.com.

Yahoo chat rooms have been closed off to anyone under the age of eighteen, following an agreement between Yahoo and NY’s attorney general, Eliot Spitzer. “We need to be vigilant to protect our children,” says Spitzer