I am used to helping clients reduce spam by training Mail’s spam filter and enabling the pop-up blocker in Safari and Firefox, but I saw something new in a recent consult. Our customer emailed while presented with a warning about a Windows security problem, pushing a shady Windows registry repair tool. She went ahead and bought it before asking me and was still faced with the message. I had her confirm the pop-up blocker was not enabled, and that the spam didn’t via email. So how did this happen?
It was immediately clear when I arrived at her home that the client received the spam through Skype. Her husband was on a long Skype chat, during which two spam chats came in and were left on the screen after the chat session. Our client was tricked by the message, and I wrote an email to the shareware payment processing company on her behalf. I encouraged them to issue a refund and to not do business with a company that gains new customers through deception and fear-mongering.
To prevent future incidents, I changed my client’s privacy settings in Skype by selecting Preferences from the Skype menu and pressing Privacy. I changed most of these settings to only allow incoming chats and calls from people in her contact list. iChat has similar privacy settings available by selecting Preferences from the iChat menu, clicking on the Accounts tab and selecting your account. From here you can control just who can see you and send you messages.
Take a moment to check your privacy settings regardless of your Chat program. Don’t be scared of these powerful communication tools, but do use some common sense and healthy skepticism when you are online. Keep in mind that any message referencing a Windows problem will not affect your Mac.