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The IM Virus That Got Someone Fired

from the hmm... dept

Wed, Jun 30th 2004 4:31am — Mike Masnick

While I'm not saying this couldn't happen, this story of someone who got fired when an IM virus sent out all of his past conversations to everyone on his buddy list certainly has the sound of an urban legend. First, no names or info are given. Second, the story is being told by an exec from a company offering software for enterprise instant messaging that would (in theory) protect against such attacks. If this were a real virus, wouldn't there be plenty of stories about such things? Instead, it seems like this is the only guy who's heard of it. The story sounds too simple to be true. After all of his old conversation were passed on to everyone else, the story goes, he got fired because an old conversation that was passed on to partners at his firm included negative comments about some of them. Once again, it certainly is possible that this happened (or that it will happen in the future). It just seems that the circumstances by which this information came out are a bit suspect.

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thecaptain, 30 Jun 2004 @ 5:54am

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They don't even mention WHICH IM software it was. Sounds made up to scare people into buying software I think.

Not that its impossible mind you...but still.

Personally, the times I use IM at work, I don't keep a history of messages received or sent, and I consider every conversation the same as I would if I was speaking out loud to a co-worker.
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Kris, 3 Dec 2006 @ 10:48am

That is a quite possible virus, it wouldn't take much for an infectious piece of software to do something like that. Look at what we have now where some virus's will send themselves to all of the individuals in your address book. Not to mention alot of msn messenger viruses that tell you "Hey check out my new pics" which is a link to an exe file..

the easiest way to prevent this would be exactly what the above guy mentioned. Don't save history, then if this ever did come about, there wouldn't be anything to be sent.

its a quite possible virus, however I haven't heard of it and I highly doubt there's anything doing that right now.
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