Since most of the people I know only use AIM to talk to people they specifically know..
The bots might be better off answering to
me: Who is this?
bot: Angela.
me: who?
bot: you dont remember me? T_T
me: uhhh. [feel guilty] vagggueelllyyyyyyyy…

I had the exact same false conversation only a few months ago.

As Agent Smith said in the Matrix when Neo was going to rescue Morepheus “Find them and destroy them (aim spammers)”

Open a cmd window and using the NETSTAT command, determine the remote IP of the spam bot. Hint, try direct IM connection. You’ll see a TIME_WAIT in netstat which potentially could be the spammers public IP.

If enough people put effort into this, a list could be complied and it’ll only be a matter of time before law enforcement might be interested.

**Note I am passing along the high level overview of the procedure. Do research to find more details.

[Editor's reply: This will not work, since the bots will almost certainly not accept Direct IM connections. The "netstat" command is only able to show you the peers you are connected to, in this case, the AIM server is the peer, not the person you are messaging. The exception is during a Direct IM (hence the "direct" part).]

kd1greene: hey
who is this?
kd1greene: I cant belive you dont remember me
again, who is this?
kd1greene: I cant belive you dont remember me
….great a bot
kd1greene: A bot? not hardly babe. Are you?
I am super awesome, but hate that some how random bots find my screen name somehow
kd1greene: Im not a freaking bot
then why is it so hard to say who you are?
kd1greene: Hey what’s up? 23/F here. u?
*facepalm*
kd1greene: Hmm. Have we chattted before?
*facepalm*
kd1greene: Oh sorrrry. l waasnt sure. Butt anywayyyssss.. What r u up to?

I blocked them after that…

njworld: hey
me: hi?
njworld: im sooooooooooooooooooo boreddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
me: who is this?
njworld: just a lonely girl looking to chat. you interested?
me: er…..
njworld: so anyways, what’s up?
me: Um, I think you should let me know how you got my sn. I don’t know you.
njworld: Oh, cool cool. hey you wanna do something fun?
me: …..this is a bot, isn’t it?
njworld: lol no i’m not a bot silly
me: then tell me how you got my sn.
-njworld is offline-

….. dunno what to make of it.

Any ideas of how to stop that (when it’s someone on your own list, even though they’re not actually spamming you)?

Just kidding. But you know that someone out there must think that, which makes me both sad and chuckle at the same time.

More on topic, I feel like there are four vectors for AIM spamming around. In order of how often I see them being active:
1. Zombie computers – Generates new random sn’s to spam away. These tend to piggyback on either a centralized list, or just on existing users’ buddy lists accessed locally. Illegal. Also horribly annoying, because you know a friend’s sn is infected but it’s hard to figure out which one (unless you want to run an algorithm to figure out which sn is always on when you get spammed..)
2. Password collectors – Web sites or services that take your password and do what they feel like with it. Probably not illegal, if they tell you they’re going to do it up front, but definitely bad practice.
3. Profile trojans – Only affect the profile of a user, adding an extra link to spam others. Transmissible by clicking, but seem to die out once underlying exploit bugs (in the client, browser, or the OS) are fixed.
4. Standard bots – I don’t see these around very much anymore. There used to be bots which were clearly set up by real humans to spam, with limited sets of account names. Probably died out because zombie machines will do all this and more.

Anybody else see new ones? The social networking seems like the most recent thing, but zombies still rule the spam world that knocks on my door.

This is a copy of the link location: http://blast.aim.com/join/Y3J1c2hhbGVydC0wY2E4NTJzc2NAYmxhc3QuYWltLmNvbQ==

I havent checked it out yet, but figured i’d post it here.

rokrxr2 (3:01:58 AM): Hi. Your ex-boyfriend just posted this on a site telling people to spam you:
rokrxr2 (3:01:58 AM): [02:51]********: Hey, wanna come over and have sex?
[02:51]RebekkahKrystine: We broke up 8 months ago fucker stop talking to me.
[02:52]********: Is that a no?

AIM. Fuck with her if you want.
rokrxr2 (3:02:25 AM): May I have his AIM to post and get people to spam him instead?

I had so many of these stupid things when I woke up that my computer took itself offline.
Meaning they scared my antivirus so bad that it disconnected itself.
Insane.

Most all the messages go something like this:
BeardOfGorbachev (2:52:51 AM): Excuse me.
BeardOfGorbachev (2:53:04 AM): May I have the screen name of your ex that messaged you for sex?

Then when I wake up in the morning, they are offline.

AIM needs to figure out some way to hault all this, or I will be stopping my usage of their product.

A few notes: to Mike (posted Jan 4, 2008), while it’s technically true that you can’t warn AIM-Bots, these spIM bots are not official AIM-Bots{tm}. They are simply bots on AIM, and they CAN be warned. In fact, I do so to each and every one, knowing it won’t do anything but eventually impose rate-limits on how much more traffic they can blast across the wire. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Instant_Messenger#Terminology )

To Norm (posted Jun 4, 2008), what you describe is not possible. Each screen name is unique and what it sounds like is that someone else now has your password. But… before you change your password, that’s PROBABLY because your machine is infected with a trojan horse which will send your new password to the scammer. Follow the instructions on AIM.com to remove viruses and trojan horses ( http://www.aim.com/help_faq/security/trojan.adp ) and then don’t click on any suspicious links from porn sites, lottery winning notifications, notices from AOL/AIM that direct you to sites OTHER than AOL/AIM, etc. If the hyperlink looks too good to be true, it is.

For your collection and analysis, here are 68 more screen names who have sent my screen names variants on this AIM Crush spIM: abdulnakae77, aehsdalilaaehs, akikof2, alexasuncion, armadillo08, batapasa28415, bergetgattis18, berylesarno26, bloodred14, boricualuv0381, britanisimo26, bryantlanders31, bubosapo92900, cmecham, cointondevine77, corlydalal10, cyrusorsi84, davidator, debbramugnai63, derwilde1052545, Deuxame2, deweyvermeule40, dilanprodromou7, domenicodarst77, durmitten48, elainavignali42, enriqueredsun2, esewkylynnesew, garelehar87, gastonsecor12, gwenethstager60, hastysahl95, hurlingbricks, ivory7342, justenkressin1, lchaisson925, lewha96, liliankirkman78, lishebloom89, livsteiker8, lopuduzi35914, lurafago28918, margauxrent98, mayetecilla41, mowexefovy30686, obadiasmelton9, othobochnak5, pablostern2, paigemartens39, paxarihym95383, raesouthwick7, rogerslem36, rothsamoggia59, saritabramble3, sokidoto51405, tempmcevoy65, tisuryno67596, trulafauth69, tudjdarlatudj, tugylyko99552, vannichamplin21, vonosawypa69053, wainelagakos34, wiwutunu30403, Xezeseky48377, yoninapossolo53, zolutolok71986, zopymehy15110

For those of you using Pidgin (a multi-service IM client for Yahoo, MSN, AIM, … yadda yadda yadda) I found an anti-bot plugin, Bot Sentry, that shows some promise. I’m installing it today. Check out this article:

http://xabbott.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/instant-message-spam-and-pidgin/

Good luck.