The AIM FishBot Phenomenon

Yes, it's probably useful to know that script kiddies know how screen scrape and that they are moving into "Do you have Prince Albert in the can?" 2.0

And they do us a real service in bringing home that what is fishy in our web experience may be phishy (or at least fishbotty). Do you want to wager whether somewhere in the bowels of a former Soviet state entrepre-criminals are exploring how to monetize such a process (and not intending to offer an opt-out option)?

It may take a little while to see if this pranksterism can turn sout, since we seem to be in the very early stages: there's not yet a wikipedia article on fishbot, and a sole Wired article ( http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/11/fishbot-roundup.html ) is concerned about robots, not webbots.

I've been hit by the [papa,phobic]coho a couple times in recent months. Its pretty lame.

reaction: this is awesome. sure, if you get connected to someone unpleasant that sux (the "14-yr-old" problem). otherwise, you get a neat little mystery and random but pleasant connection to a stranger. sounds fun.

Guess it's time to add a regex block feature to gaim. (block .*Coho)?