Getting lots of spam and bots messaging me when online on yahoo messenger,How do you stop this?

[Gaelic]

Hello fellow chatters. It seems i am having a lot of issues with weird people messaging me. I had no idea what this was all about till a friend told me these are basically bots spamming with links to sites which they represent. Well nowadays i get undesirable cam invites and add requests as well which is very irritating. It seems these bots have human like responses saved with them leading to the confusion on which is real and which is not. Mind you this problem has started whenever i visit a yahoo chat room. I recently started using yahoo messenger on my system which runs Windows XP and am new to the chat rooms so please bear with me and give me a proper solution.

[Macarenas]

Well why don't you use a client such as Yahelite or a java client because usually those don't allow yahoo private messages by default unless you open them. You could get an alternate to a yahoo messenger if you search for it which provide more or less the same functionality as it but without the added headache of the bots and unknown people messaging you. On yahoo you could also try closing the private messages option from people who are not on your list of friends. This basically means you will only be able to talk to those who you add to your messenger.

[kattman]

Well i stopped visiting yahoo chat rooms using yahoo messenger because i didn't have the patience to deal with so many messages at a time and to filter out which is a bot and who is a real person. But that's an extreme step. I now use yahoo messenger for talking to friends and people i know and are added to my messenger list, i use Yahelite to talk to people in the chat room or visit a yahoo room. Thus i keep both running when i wish to chat. See if this arrangement works for you and revert back if you still have issues.

[ThoMas321]

Well i personally use Yahaven as a client to chat in rooms. The advantage is that it also doubles back as a messenger with just like yahoo in terms of the interface and features. You have a lot of options including a nice filter list which you can use to filter out the messages of bots with typical names. You can also see the display image of the person before talking to them, this can give you a bit of an idea whether the person is real or a bot.

[chroma]

Well i do the double client thing as well actually. I use YSupra to chat in the yahoo chat rooms while i use the regular messenger to chat to the people i know. This is a good idea since then unknown and people with malicious intent such as those wanting you to click on a link and getting keylogged can't get your actual yahoo id. This also serves as a good deterrent for people who keep spamming their websites using bots since the clients auto ignore generic links. There are options on messenger itself if you wish to close your messages to unknown people. The only drawback is you won't be able to receive or send any messages without adding a person first in that case.

[Sam.D]

Well i can tell you the way to close private messages on your regular messenger itself to stop the nonsense of bots and unknown people messaging you and irritating you. Do as follows :
Go to your messenger then preferences and then select the chat option. There you will see a unchecked box saying "ignore chat invitations", check it. Then go to the ignore list and select the option " Ignore anyone who isn't on my messenger list" or something of that sort.
By using these 2 options you won't get anyone to message you unless you have added them first, since you will only add people you know, this basically works in your favor. If you don't want to do this then ignoring the person or bots who keep messaging you and reporting them as spam will only help banning those accounts. Hope this helps,good luck.