Oh instant message SPAM…

I’ve kinda got a bit of a crush on you XXXX.. If you wanna know who I am though you’re gonna have to Click Here and play along with my game!

Hey there! – You have been selected for a free vacation to the Bahamas! Click Here to confirm your prize before its too late!

You Have 2 New Crush Requests One of your buddies has a crush on you. Find out who

Well, I got a little frustrated about getting several of these a day and did a little digging. All of the SPIMs I have received point one of to the following domains:

• pure-luv.com
• fling.com
• winicane.com

All of these domains are owned by Millnic Media, an affiliate CPA network. I have an suspicion that Millnic Media may sell some of their “leads” (your personal information) up to Mobile Messenger, though I haven’t been able to confirm this.

Thus, it seems that either Millnic Media or one/some of their affiliates (most likely) are in the process of culling AIM screen names and spamming the bejeezus out of them. Many of these SPIMs appear to be coming from toolazy.net, which appears to be an affiliate to Millnic Media based on the destination URL and redirects I get when clicking a link.

Even if Millnic Media or Mobile Messenger aren’t directly responsible for sending the SPIM, a responsible affiliate networks (e.g., Millnic Media) and lead aggregator (e.g., Mobile Messenger) should do a much better job about culling the bad affiliates out of their network.