salmon, trout, coho got your IM?

So I've had this weird thing happen to me a few times over the past year or so. I'll be logged in to my AIM account minding my own business and then I get some crazy message from someone with a username containing the words "salmon," "trout," or "coho." They have happened chronologically in that order. My most recent is named "spiedoncoho." Fun, right? I just assumed it was someone who knew me and was having a good time at my expense when I would respond "umm, who are you?"

I finally smartened up and decided I needed to do some searching and find out just what is going on. My MLS is coming in slightly handy and I got to the dirt on my first Google search. I have been the victim of an IM "bot." Essentially an internet robot that is faking conversations between people. These particular bots send a message to a user, with the sending username one of these fish names. Then when I reply, they connect the reply to another actual IM user, who gets my message seemingly randomly. Crazy, huh? So then they ask why I'm messaging them, and I say no, you messaged me first. Hah.

You can read more about this, what has been called on the net "The Great Hatsby." This is kind of irritating, and luckily on this wikipedia page it tells you how to opt out. All you have to do is type in $optout and it gives you the instructions, it worked perfectly! The article also goes on to say that the usernames were commonly harvested from Livejournal, Xanga, and deviantART accounts.

One mystery solved, dozens to go!