Stop IM spam in Pidgin

I just started using Pidgin as my client and decided to get in touch with all my readers who want to talk to me, so I have also been advertising my IM handles openly. I didn’t know this kind of spam existed, as Mark from Make Use Of says, this means dozens of spam messages eventually.

I immediately felt at ease with Pidgin, since he also showed a great way to stop this spam, using a plugin called Bot Sentry. It forces people not on your contact list to answer a question you specify before they can send you a message.

This is such a simple, but very effective way to stop these messages. A simple question like “Write down every second letter from these characters: aIsmmalwneaslogmde” will keep away bots for a while.