Over the last couple of months I’ve been receiving IM spam from random AOL IM accounts all ending in “coho”. The messages have been seemingly gibberish. Getting tired of the spam, I started responding to the messages out of frustration. I just wanted to curse at it. Then one day I had this conversation:
12:28:59 PM negatedcoho: Hello…
12:29:13 PM Jason Motylinski: Hey, are you the same guy from yesterday?
12:29:30 PM Jason Motylinski: you owe me 5 bucks!
12:29:40 PM negatedcoho: hi
12:29:48 PM Jason Motylinski: wtf? when do I get my money?
12:30:24 PM negatedcoho: ? what r u talking about
12:30:34 PM Jason Motylinski: whatrutalkingabout?
12:30:49 PM negatedcoho: bye
12:30:55 PM Jason Motylinski: hey, you talked with me.
12:31:03 PM Jason Motylinski: you can’t just leave.
12:31:08 PM negatedcoho: no you immed me first
12:31:13 PM Jason Motylinski: no I didn’t.
12:31:20 PM negatedcoho: whatever
12:31:32 PM Jason Motylinski: nice…real nice.
12:31:34 PM Jason Motylinski: have a good life.
I still continue to receive random messages from “coho”, though. Sometimes it negatedcoho, or weirdcoho, but the IM names always end in “coho”.
I finally came across an explanation for the weird messages on Wikipedia. Apparently it’s a bot which randomly connects two people on IM called TheGreatHatsby.
From Wikipedia:
Responses from users are forwarded by the bot to another one of the users similarly contacted. These two users are paired up, and any message which one of them sends to the bot will be forwarded to the other. Thus, if neither of the users is aware of TheGreatHatsby, they will each think that the other user contacted them, and that the other user’s screen name is the bot’s screen name.
Interesting concept. I wish it was an opt-in service though. If I had chosen to participate I might appreciate it a bit more. Notice in the article it mentions the ability to opt out using the command “$optout”.
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:35 pm
[...] also came accross this story and then I ended up at The Missing Hat. I stumbled upon a bunch of Coho’d people, some of [...]
December 24th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
[...] quick Google search sent me to this post about Coho Aim Spam. It appears that this is a bot called The Great Hatsby (yes a word play featuring The Great Gatsby) [...]
January 4th, 2009 at 1:28 am
Thank you for clearing up what was EXTREMELY confusing. awkward social experement
January 15th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Omg I love you for posting this! I only read the coho portion of wikipedia so I missed the optout command. Thanks!!
January 19th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
thank you so much for this.
i’ve been so sick of this coho spam.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
so how do you get rid of this coho thing.
or how do i ”opt-out” of it? i added the screen name of TheGreatHatsby to my buddy list to do that $optout command, but it was offline.. is it ever online?
butI recieved a ”coho” message tonight, and quite frankly i’m freaked out and curious how this great hatsby thing got my screen name to distribute and use like this..
April 30th, 2009 at 12:07 am
[...] So …. haxor, basically. (3:52:08 AM) mikachewie: One second. (3:52:28 AM) CountryCoho: http://jason.motylinski.com/2008/12/05/coho-aim-spam/ (3:53:02 AM) mikachewie: Oh. (3:53:27 AM) mikachewie: Well, that’s… interesting. [...]
June 25th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Just once, I’d like to be contacted by one of these bots/victims, and have them actually understand what I explain them rather than spout off. Actually, just once, I’d like to realize the person has Coho on their name before I have a response to the first line.