Instant Messaging Spam (Trillian)

[Knavish]

I use Trillian for instant messaging. A few times, I've gotten messages which appear to come from one particular offline friend of mine, via Yahoo. For example:

[15:52] friend: <ding>
[15:52] friend: Wow I finally found a way to lose weight and is inexpensive. Try 5 dollars and I lost 9 pounds in 15 days. Check it out also, I hope it can help you too http://CraptasticSpamWebsite.com
[15:52] Me: WTF are you talking about???
[15:57] friend: <ding>
[15:57] friend: Howdy, I just spoke to Becca and Brice, and they told me to check out some pills they saw on Oprah. They said they lost 23 pounds in about amonth with them. Anyway you can find them here for only $5 http://CraptasticSpamWebsite.com


This whole time, the friend is listed as offline. Has anyone else heard of something like this happening. Could my friend's yahoo account be hacked...?

 

[TheStu]

Either it is hacked, or the friend has a virus.

A good way to possibly test would be to have said friend make a new yahoo profile and see if the problem keeps happening.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The friend is probably infected. I had to block a few of my family members because they got tons of viruses that did the same, and never bothered to clean it. Was getting tired of the spam.