Tips for dealing with Skype spam
I’ve been used to receiving spam on IM clients such as MSN Live Messenger and Adium for a long time now. What usually happens is a contact I haven’t spoken to for years will suddenly pop up telling me to click on this “great link” or implore me to “check out this great site - you won’t believe it!”. However, increasingly I’ve been experiencing this problem with Skype too and according to the Skype forums, I’m not alone.
The last time it happened to me, a chat box simply popped-up from a supposedly female contact called “-sex”. The spam message was quite simply a smiley emoticon with a party hat on.
While this type of spam is fairly harmless, other types are more sinister, such as the one received by a user on the Skype forums who reports:
At 08.00 today I had a skype call from ” his lordship”. (lordship.pua) skype user, He claimed to work for my bank and they were doing some work on my account !! Could i please confirm my sort code and account number.
Other users report spam messages that claim their PC has a virus, content that includes crude pictures and sexually explicit messages aimed at female users. The problem is due to the fact that Skype simply aren’t filtering spam as they should be, which I find inexcusable. I have no spam problems when using an IM client such as Google Talk, so there’s no excuse for a company as big as Skype to not be just as vigilant too. Until they finally take action, there is unfortunately very little you can do about this problem other than restrict messages to only those that are in your contact list.
On Windows, do the following:
- Open Skype, click “Tools” and then “Options”
- Click “Show Advanced Options”
- Select the following to ensure maximum privacy: Allow Calls from only people in my contact list, Automatically receive video from no-one, Show that I have video to no-one, Allow chats from only people in my contact list and uncheck “allow my status to be shown on the web”
- Click “Notifications” and uncheck “pop up a window when someone requests my contact details”, “Display notifications in the Windows tray when someone comes online” and “Display notifications in the Windows tray when someone requests my contact details”
On Mac:
- Select “Skype” and then “Preferences”
- Select the “Privacy” tab
- Follow the same steps as for Windows above
Doing this obviously limits your availability on Skype and will cause problems if someone is trying to call you for the first time and you haven’t added them to your contacts. However, until Skype starts blocking spam itself, this is the most effective way to protect yourself from uninvited guests. For a more in depth look at Skype spam, check out this interesting article at VoIP News which dates the problem back to early 2008. If after reading that you’ve really had enough, then take a look at the post I wrote a while back about 5 alternatives to Skype.
Posted at 5:22 pm on Jan 5th
I used to get a lot of Skype spam like this and there was a bug in Skype which prevented me from easily clearing out the backlog of contact notices from spambots (ugh), but haven’t seen this more recently.
I wonder if Skype (the company) has a way to easily detect spammy activity and shut down those accounts, not unlike how Twitter did recently.
Posted at 12:46 pm on Jan 6th
I’m not sure they do. If this sort of thing is happening, then it suggests that Skype simply are not focusing enough effort on spam and hijacking of accounts in general:
http://it-sec-news.blogspot.com/2008/09/skype-ignores-paypal-siphoning-hijack.html
Posted at 12:06 pm on Jan 7th
We’re always looking for ways to eliminate spam on Skype - Skype 4.0 Beta 3 for Windows includes a ‘report this user‘ feature which allows you to let us know if you receive spam in contact requests, for example.
You can also drop us a line at abuse@skype.net and we’ll investigate any unwelcome activity.
Posted at 5:29 pm on Jan 23rd
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Posted at 4:24 pm on Jan 24th
That is great there will be a reporting function soon to report abuse, and I already know about that feature of limiting it to only contacts, etc, but if you ever try to search for people in SkypeMe! mode 99.9% of all them are spam. I like to chat with others that are open to chat, but it is pretty useless when all it brings up is spam accounts, and I don’t see any new features in 4.0 that will improve the search cabilities of to actually find users that are actually on SkypeMe! mode, and not some sex cam or porn advertisement. I’m guessing the search cabilities are somehow connected in to how long someone has been online or fequency of use…I don’t really understand the logic in Skype’s search algorythm which all in the end is just spam. This is one thing that has irritated me for the longest time about Skype, and I have been a Skype user ever since it came out.
Posted at 10:24 am on Jan 26th
@Teddie Bear – you might like to take a look at the Skype Community, which has forums where you can meet and talk to other Skype users from around the world.
Posted at 2:19 pm on Jul 27th
I’ve done all of this but spam still arrives. It seems that the spammers are somehow able to auto-add themselves as a contact which then enables their spam. I don’t want ANYONE to be able to automatically add themselves as a contact! I am using the newest Skype version 4.1.0.141
Posted at 7:29 am on Jul 31st
I’m with Ed! I have the latest version, have tweaked all the security settings, but still get several of these spam messages a day. Infuriating!