Skype Buddy List Spam
It seems people are catching onto Stuart Henshall’s trick of playing with your Skype name to get it at the top of people’s buddy lists. Two people on my list have put period marks at the beginning of their profile name, messing with the alphabetical order to get their names above all my legitimate friends. This is what it looks like (names changed to protect the embarrassed):
Now, I’m all for letting people call themselves whatever they like, and the owner of the buddy list is always at liberty to rename but what’s the point of this? Is it a form of spam, and if so, should we call it Buddy List Spam? And, taken to its logical conclusion, are we going to see folk adopting profile names like @(!#)!BoogieMan, just so BoogieMan can be at the top of my list (until of course, I delete him in disgust or rename him zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZob.)
What I’m not clear about is what happens once you’ve renamed a contact. Does that name stay forever, whatever the owner of that profile does to their profile name? Seems to.
Cool trick I love what Skype has to offer with so many buffies on lists it would be cool to be at the top of everyone!
Posted by: Ashley Bowers | December 21, 2005 at 11:33 PM
Unrelated note: Enjoy your WorldService slots, and your latest on anonymous browsing got me here to look for the software you spoke about....
Can't find it, can you send me a link?
Ta!
Colin on the Burmese Border
Posted by: Colin | December 22, 2005 at 02:15 PM
Jaanus has supplied an answer to the question about what overrides what in terms of changing contact names as they appear in your list. Check out his post here:
http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2005/12/fighting_the_buddy_list_spam.html
Posted by: Jeremy Wagstaff | December 30, 2005 at 06:52 PM
This is just a small trick. As skype is p2p based, if hacker break 1 point, it's break into the whole net. I think that's the problem.
Posted by: internetphonesolution | January 18, 2006 at 05:08 AM