AIM, MSN, or YIM Botting

Postby **Stephen** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 9:37 pm

It has come to the staffs attention that someone here on our beloved site...is using bot programs to pester other members. Sometimes these bots are harmless...othertimes they are carrying virus' or links to porn sites. This will stop immediatly. If you are caught doing this...you will be banned. No questions asked. If you have been doing this, and want to apologize...you will not be banned for actions before this point. Call it immunity. If you know someone who is botting, PM a staff member. Your indenity will not be made public, and action will be taken against the offending party. Some of us share our personal info with a site with thousands of members (I am speaking about staff members) We don't have to give out our personal online info, but we do because we care about you guys. Things like this only abuse our trust...and gives everyone a bad image. Don't let one rotten apple spoil the lot. So, quick recap.

1. Don't use bot programs such as found on ebuamsworld.
2. If you are caught using one, you will be banned. No strikes, no fanfair, no crying parents.
3. If you know someone botting, report them to a CAA staff member. Your idenity will be kept in confidence.

Thank you, and I hope you are all having a pleasent saturday evening.

Postby **Azier the Swordsman** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 10:31 pm

I will stand with Shatterheart in saying that I have personally recieved real bots attempting to leach personal information from myself in the past. It was highly irritating and did not make me happy in the least. Bots are a very real threat and making a prank out of it is not amusing in the slightest.

And honestly, hearing about stuff like this really ticks me off since I have dealt with the real thing before. It is just so... not funny.

Postby **Joshua Christopher** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 12:20 am

I got one of these the other day.

Silly people.

Website · Postby **Shadowchild** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 1:47 am

look through the forums there is an update. trust me it is on the bot subject. -_-

Postby **Slater** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 1:59 am

-_-;
Sorry, it was I who did this. I did it after reviewing the source of the bot and confirming that it wouldn't leach/distribute personal info that filtered through it, so I decided to have some fun with it. It was all done light-heartedly and completely randomly; I didn't target anyone with intentions more than to help my boredom.

The logs of the conversations are all (I believe) being held securly at ebaums and shouldn't be anywhere else. I did not distribute any info I got from the pranks or post the logs anywhere, so you don't need to worry about that. The logs can still be accessed by anyone who has the urls to them, but I don't have them so I can't request that they be deleted. Still, I can assure you that it won't be happening again.

Sorry for causing such a mess.

also, see this site for info on how to block the bot from being used against you again

Postby **Jman** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 4:16 am

You apligized man, ur safe.

Postby **Arnobius** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 6:01 am

This may sound like a stupid question, but can you explain what a bot is? I had never heard of it until this issue came up

Postby **Mr. SmartyPants** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 6:37 am

Shatterheart wrote:(it was also masking things people would say to me...making me look like a bot

actually that could be an problem on trillian's part, not the bot ^^;; (was using trillian at the time)

Postby **Warrior 4 Jesus** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 7:03 am

Trillian? From Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? I don't get it.

Postby **Steeltemplar** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 7:13 am

AnimeHeretic wrote:This may sound like a stupid question, but can you explain what a bot is? I had never heard of it until this issue came up

Basically, in this case, someone created a program that would IM the target and then respond to what the target said (probably based upon certain word triggers). All the while, it logs and saves the conversation for later enjoyment by the prankster. As far as I can tell, the log is not automatically posted in any public place.

Postby **Gypsy** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 7:22 am

A bot is a program that masquerades as a person instant messaging you. Some are harmless and just meant to be funny, and others are not so harmless. The bot will often ask you things like "what are you doing now?" and have a series of programmed answers like "cool" to reply to whatever you said. A log of the conversation is being kept somewhere, be it funny or be it for harvesting personal info. Bots will also drop links that are best left not clicked. Just a common sense FYI: never click a link from someone you don't know.

Some bots are easy to spot. "Let's be friends!" is not something that a complete stranger would start a conversation with (usually). If you're wondering if a conversation is really with a bot, try asking a question without using a question mark. Make it a useless trivia question or something, and don't accept "I don't know" or "I'm not sure" as an answer right away.

Oh, and Trillian is a merging of the three big instant messaging programs: Yahoo, AIM, and IM. It's a little on the buggy side, but I've used it before and liked it. ^^

Thank you for stepping forward with this, frwl. You didn't have to go public, but I really respect the fact that you did. You're not in trouble and it wasn't meant for harm, so I wouldn't beat yourself up about it or anything. At least we now know that someone wasn't doing it maliciously.

*edit* Sorry Steeltemplar, I didn't mean to repeat you with a bot explination, we were posting at the same time. ^^;

Postby **Steeltemplar** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 8:51 am

[quote="Gypsy"]A bot is a program that masquerades as a person instant messaging you. Some are harmless and just meant to be funny, and others are not so harmless. The bot will often ask you things like "what are you doing now?" and have a series of programmed answers like "cool" to reply to whatever you said. A log of the conversation is being kept somewhere, be it funny or be it for harvesting personal info. Bots will also drop links that are best left not clicked. Just a common sense FYI: never click a link from someone you don't know.

Some bots are easy to spot. "Let's be friends!" is not something that a complete stranger would start a conversation with (usually). If you're wondering if a conversation is really with a bot, try asking a question without using a question mark. Make it a useless trivia question or something, and don't accept "I don't know" or "I'm not sure" as an answer right away.

Oh, and Trillian is a merging of the three big instant messaging programs: Yahoo, AIM, and IM. It's a little on the buggy side, but I've used it before and liked it. ^^

Thank you for stepping forward with this, frwl. You didn't have to go public, but I really respect the fact that you did. You're not in trouble and it wasn't meant for harm, so I wouldn't beat yourself up about it or anything. At least we now know that someone wasn't doing it maliciously.

*edit* Sorry Steeltemplar, I didn't mean to repeat you with a bot explination, we were posting at the same time. ^^]
How dare you

Trillian rocks! As you say, buggy, but I love having all my IM's in one place.

Postby **Arnobius** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 8:52 am

Thanks for the info. I guess it's best to not give out the IM address to everybody then...

On Trillian: I had that, but it wouldn't work with AIM, and somehow corrupted itself so I had to uninstall it. Buggy indeed. Maybe when they get more bugs worked out I'll reinstall

Postby **Syaoran** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 9:40 am

How can you tell if you have a bot.

Website · Postby **Shadowchild** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 9:50 am

yeah i wanna know that too.

Postby **Slater** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 11:18 am

You never "have a bot". Bots talk to you from remote sources, such as the one I used. Technically, nobody who was hit by the Ebaum bot was in little to no danger at all; the bot is not used to record personal information, upload harmful data to a target's computer, or make itself go around acting like other CAAers, and there's no way that I would use a bot that was at all dangerous on anyone from CAA or any other source because such things are illegal (as opposed to this one, which is perfectly legal).

Of course, those non-safe bots are the reason behind this whole mess, and I agree that anyone who uses such a bot (or uses a safe bot like this one with harmful intent) deserves to not only be banned, but to have their details forwarded to the authorities in law.

Postby **Syaoran** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 11:20 am

I C....thanks.

Postby **Mr. SmartyPants** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 11:24 am

Bots usually tell you that they are a bot

but such "safe" aim bots that you can talk to on aim are like "SmarterChild" and such

Website · Postby **Shadowchild** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 11:27 am

oh o.o

Postby **Slater** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 11:29 am

Exactly, though those bots can't as easily be sent to someone and are much easier to identify as bots

Postby **teen4truth** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 1:23 pm

Shatterheart wrote:It has come to the staffs attention that someone here on our beloved site...is using bot programs to pester other members. Sometimes these bots are harmless...othertimes they are carrying virus' or links to porn sites. This will stop immediatly. If you are caught doing this...you will be banned. No questions asked. If you have been doing this, and want to apologize...you will not be banned for actions before this point. Call it immunity. If you know someone who is botting, PM a staff member. Your indenity will not be made public, and action will be taken against the offending party. Some of us share our personal info with a site with thousands of members (I am speaking about staff members) We don't have to give out our personal online info, but we do because we care about you guys. Things like this only abuse our trust...and gives everyone a bad image. Don't let one rotten apple spoil the lot. So, quick recap.

1. Don't use bot programs such as found on ebuamsworld.
2. If you are caught using one, you will be banned. No strikes, no fanfair, no crying parents.
3. If you know someone botting, report them to a CAA staff member. Your idenity will be kept in confidence.

Thank you, and I hope you are all having a pleasent saturday evening.

Uhhh, what is botting? If I have done it then I am sorry I probably either didn't mean to or didn't know that it was bad.

teen4truth

Postby **Stephen** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 1:48 pm

Read this thread, and you should get a general idea of what botting is. Or read the thread on the general board titled "sorry"

Postby **Retten** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 5:29 pm

Wow I am so glad you made this topic its only happened to me twice and by someone on here -_- it was a couple moths ago so I don't remember who did it *sigh* But wow is it annoying

Postby **Ren_sama** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 6:13 pm

Happened to me once. Though I believe that was the work of my friend...I think.
Well, I'm glad someone came out and confessed. I'm sure he didn't mean any harm by it...^^;

Postby **Yumie** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 8:32 am

Yeah I talk to SmarterChild sometimes when I'm really bored. . . gets annoying after a while though because it starts repeating itself and stuff. . .

Postby **Mithrandir** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 8:39 am

Yumie wrote:Yeah I talk to SmarterChild sometimes when I'm really bored. . . gets annoying after a while though because it starts repeating itself and stuff. . .

In theory, doesn't that imply that YOU are repeating YOURSELF?

netnurse wrote: Can you tell me more about bots? What exactly is a bot and how do you know if you have one? Thanks.

A bot is a program designed to either crawl through data and bring back answers, or to interface with a person and pretend to be another person. (see turing test for more info).

I'd wager if you don't know what it is, you won't have to worry about having one. If someone is using one on you, that would be a different story. In the aforementioned instance, it would manifest as a person trying to IM you, only there's no person on the other end. Just a program pretending to be one.

HIH!

AIM, MSN, or YIM Botting

AIM, MSN, or YIM Botting

Who is online

Loading