A recent piece in New Scientist digs into the drivers and headaches around spim -- instant messaging spam:

"The volume of so-called "spim" is set [to] triple in 2004, according to a new report from the Radicati Group, a technology market research firm in Palo Alto, California.

The company projects that 1.2 billion spims will be sent, 70 per cent of which are porn-related. This is a mere trickle compared to the 35 billion spams expected, but the researchers warn that spim is growing at about three times the rate of spam, as spammers adapt their toolkit to exploit a rapidly rising number of new instant messaging (IM) users."

A great reason to tighten the controls that IM already offers us. This is also a great argument for enterprises to bring on instant messaging management offerings from firms like IMlogic, Facetime, Akonix, and ZoneLabs, that will block spim before it gets to your IM client.

This does not necessarily block pornbots encountered in public chat rooms, however:

"Another spimming tool is even more stealthy. Spimmers deploy bots in chatrooms that pose as people and persuade other chatters to invite them on to their buddy lists. In a crowded chatroom, an invitation can be solicited with a fairly rudimentary impersonation, says Stowe Boyd of the technology consulting firm A Working Model in Virginia."