After just four days of being online, IMified’s Windows Live Messenger bot reached service limits, preventing new users from adding it and seeing its online presence. A week later they were turned down for requests to remove the limit for the service so the bot remained in a problematic state.
The latest blog entry states the issue with Microsoft is still up in the air, but it appears Microsoft isn’t so evil after all, listens to customers, and opened the bot up.
imified@imified.com is currently responding normally and appearing online for new users, the address on the homepage is also no longer striked out, so hopefully this will be the last this bots problems for a while.
For a few days since last week, the rogue software known as WinFixer was being served to Windows Live Messenger and MSN Groups users by MSN’s advertising service at rad.msn.com.
Internet Explorer MVP Sandi Hardmeier investigated the reports of the spyware being in Windows Live Messenger, which has also plagued Messenger Plus! Live’s sponsor and social networking Web site MySpace.
Microsoft later apologized for incident issuing the following statement:
Microsoft was notified of malware that was being served through ads placed in Windows Live Messenger banners. As a result of this notification we immediately investigated the reports and removed the offending ads, as this is a violation of our ad serving policy. We can confirm that the ads are no longer being served by any Microsoft system. We apologize for the inconvenience and are reviewing our ad approval process to reduce the chance of an occurrence such as this happening again. To help customers protect their PCs from malware threats, Microsoft recommends customers follow our Protect your PC guidance at www.microsoft.com/protect.
The best way to avoid being infected by software like this is to disregard advertisements that contain:
- Free offers
- Anti-virus
- Firewalls
- PC scans
- PC optimization
- Screen savers
- Warnings or threats
Warnings or threats in advertisements may include claims of your computer being infected, or a report of the number of viruses on your computer. The reality is, advertisements like this cannot scan your computer from a Web page like it claims, they are purely psychological – to get you to click the ad and install the software.
The safest way out of a popup or dialog is to simply click the X close button at the top right, never click OK or any similar buttons inside the window. Clicking OK will almost always result in you getting nasties on your computer.
As Sandi recommends in her article, download and install Mike Burgess’s HOSTS file to block out dodgy ads.
Windows Live Hotmail is to be the final name for the currently beta Windows Live Mail service, as announced by Richard Sim, Senior Product Manager for Hotmail.
The decision comes from the importance of the Hotmail brand name, and to make the transition easier for existing customers.
I believe retaining the Hotmail name for Microsoft’s Web mail service is the right move. Adding Windows Live to it may seem pointless, as I can’t imagine anyone calling it by the full Windows Live Hotmail name, just like it is rarely referred to as MSN Hotmail, its official name.
I suspect the change won’t mean much for users, it will continue to be called simply just Hotmail.
See Microsoft hurt by poor Live branding, analysts say for further reading on the “bungled” Live branding.
A new virus labelled a variant of the Win32/Spy.VB.LO trojan by NOD32 has been spreading via Windows Live Messenger over the past couple of weeks, one of the messages it typically sends contains the recipients e-mail address, looking something like this:
» rofl @ you, http://improfile.net/members.php?msn=example@example.com
The Web site has been shutdown to stop it from spreading. The DNS is set to loopback (127.0.0.1) and “Closed for Fraud” is in the whois information.
Kelvin has created a tool called impFix to remove the virus, so give it a try if you believe to be infected with this pest.
IMified is a new service that allows you to access various Web applications via your instant messaging client though a special bot.
Online services it currently supports include:
- 30Boxes
- Backpack
- Basecamp
- Blogger
- Google Calendar
- MovableType
- RemembertheMilk
- Salesforce
- TypePad
- Wordpress
Add imified@imified.com and send it a message to get started.
As my first experience with this service, I’m currently typing out this post into Windows Live Messenger – all I had to do was enter my Wordpress login details at the IMified site and it was setup for posting.
How it went: Two problems – firstly, I didn’t have enough space in the IM window edit box for the whole post, so I had to come to the site and paste the rest. Second, it stripped the hyper link to the site at the start of the post.