I’ve seen a lot of posts and tweets the past few days about how to tell if you have the Conficker worm, how to get rid of it, etc.

I also ran a test today to make sure that I don’t have it. Here are the results of that test:

Yep, virus free.

I feel like I need to spread the word, because dear Lord this has been bugging me.

If you use the AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) network and you’ve been receiving random messages from usernames that end with “coho” or “trout,” you’re not alone. Apparently the “coho” bot targets Twitter users, and it’s only the most recent version. “Salmon” is an earlier versions of the bot. Learn more on Wikipedia.

The group currently behind this absolutely annoying spam-like scourge is Project Upstream. There is no opt-in for this, and they provide no instructions for opting out. What a bunch of douchebags. Sure, my AIM account name is out there on the internets—it’s arlodesign, by the way—so I’m asking for unknown people to contact me. But I did not ask to have my AIM account added to some service, and I certainly should be offered an easy way out.

The point of this bot is to pair up random people to have anonymous conversations around the world. If that floats your boat, go for it. It doesn’t float mine. A Google search produced these instructions, which I am happy to link to and copy and paste here for your convenience:

You can stop the messages by typing:

$optout

Then it will respond with:

OPERATOR: Are you sure you want to opt-out? If you do, you will *never* be contacted again on the account “<screenname>”. There is *no way* to opt back in and undo this.
If you are sure, type “$optout DADD”. Remember, this is permanent and irreversible!

Type what it asks:

$optout DADD

And you will recieve one final (hopefully) message:

OPERATOR: You have opted out. The account “<screnname>” will *never* be contacted again. Good bye!

The AIM bot confirming my opt-out also gave me an email address to write with complaints, which I considered, but given that they don’t care what they do with my AIM account, I certainly don’t want to give them my email address.

This has been an ARLOdesign® public service announcement.