SPAM it’s everywhere, Stupid People Annoying Menace. It is such nonsense, waist of time and waist of bandwidth. Tonight I was SPAMed by one of my friends, because his friends were doing it to him. So, he thought it would be a good idea, and instead of breaking the chain, to add another link. This is what he sends me:

Dear AIM users,
Because of our overloading of our servers, we are being forced to extract our non-active AIM users. Because this is a free service, AOL has exceeded the budget for the AIM service. We are asking that you send this exact message to 20 other AIM users to ensure us that you’re an active AIM user. Our system tracking devise will pick up this message to keep you on our active list. You have 72 hours to complete this task or your service will be cancelled immediately. Starting January 1st, 2005, we will be charging a small fee for registering of a screen name for AIM. Thank you for your time and for using AOL or AIM.
Sincerely,
Mark Jenkins
AOL Owner and Founder.

Some people will ignore this, some will find it funny, like techie people, but I bet most people will think that this is a real message. They will send it to twenty of their friends and just piss off other people and create more useless traffic on the Internet. Here is why this is just a SPAM and nothing more.

1. Overloading of servers. The only way to overload the servers is with a lot of traffic. The users’ information is simply text. Today’s servers could parse through text databases in seconds. So even if they have so many inactive users it will not overload their system. To store text is incredibly easy and cheep. With the way storage space it is sold now-a-days, the more space you buy the less you pay. That’s why large storage hard drives are so cheap.
2. AIM, has been around for so many years, which if it was possible to exceed their budget and have to charge for the service, they would have done it after the first year of the service going live, not now! AOL even added those annoying ads that we like to block by using Dead AIM and AIMutation.
3. Send it to 20 other people to make sure that you are active. HAA, Are not already IMing people on daily base?
4. Their system tracking device will pick your message. Hmm, a) tracking your message, kind of illegal, and pointless, if they are already over budget. The money used to maintain that tracking device can be used to pay for their more important expenses. a) tracking device!?! Whoever wrote this is a Moron. S/he needs to expend their dictionary. Tracking device, LoL, what are you? A spy! I think terms like application or environment might be more appropriate.
5. A user is placed in the inactive queue if they have not logged in for a set period of time. This type of tracking is more accurate, cheaper, SIMPLER and easier.
6. AOL will NOT start charging for AIM. Just like there is battle of the browsers, battle of the e-mail systems, there is a battle of the IM systems. Unless Yahoo! Or MSN start charging for their messengers AOL will not. If they do it will be very bold action on their site. When they do, they will fail Miserably. There are number of other messenger systems – ICQ, which has been around forever, Odigo, Jabber, Gaim. To add to the above few, Skype is not only offering IM capabilities but also advanced VoIP services, and few others- out there which will be a free solution, and which are already providing competition. Never underestimate the power of Open Source. Microsoft did! Now they are paying for it, and a willingly opening parts of their source code to the public and developers. Kind of late now, thought.

7. AOL Owner and Founder. Wow, yet another clue why this is simply SPAM. The person who wrote this should do their homework better. What a geek. To me this sounds like a 14 year-old. AOL is a publicly traded company/Corporation. There is no sole owner, but many shareholders and controlled by a board of directors.

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p>Oh, BTW, I wanted to se who Mark Jenkins was, and what his association to AOL was. I Googled it and this is what I came across: http://hoaxinfo.com/imcharges.htm. So this has been around since April 2003. In the one I received today the date was simply updated. WOW