Mess with your friend using an AOL Instant Messenger "bot"

Here's a fun one; not really a hack, but we suppose it could be used for all sorts of things, like blackmailing your friends and family, or at least embarrassing them. If you and your friends use AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) or iChat you can send an AIM "bot" to go and chat with your pal(s) and then have the conversation emailed back to you. This can be a lot of fun since you can choose the name of the "bot" (like Stacey or Mike), age (as in "17" or "40") and location—the classic "asl" (age, sex, location) you see in those chat rooms no one ever admits to visiting.

As an added bonus, this of course works when you the send the bot after your pal�s spiffy new SideKick which has AIM built in as well. Basically, this will work wherever there�s an AIM client which means, Macs, PCs, Linux and almost all mobile phones now. Just be careful when you send to a pal�s phone that uses AIM over SMS (text message) as it might cost them money, but hey, like you care, you�re already messing with them.

Sending the bot
Visit ChattingAimBot.com and enter in your friend�s screen name, your email (that�s where the logs will be sent) and choose the bot�s name, sex, age, location and the first message to send to your friend, er, victim.

Note: For IE users there�s some weird ActiveX thing it wants you to install. We didn�t install it on our PC or on our Mac, and it worked fine; we suggest you don�t either.

You can only send one �bot attack� per 24 hours to a specific screen name, keep that in mind and make it count.

When you start the bot, you�ll also get a status window to see what�s going on.

We might suggest sending the bot to your boss, that way when you�re up for a raise and he tries to shaft you with a 1.5% per annum, when you know you deserve a 1.7%, you can show him the logs where he chatted the night away with �Jennie�, a 17 year old from California who wanted to �webcam� it up.

We did send it after some of our friends, some of which are not too happy with us right now, sorry about that�it had to be done. But in all fairness, we sent the bot after our own account in order to post it here; here�s a screen shot of the bot talking to us on AIM/iChat.

Getting the logs�

After the bot is finished, it gives the last message and then sends you the email logs.

Here�s the email was sent to our gmail account.

Funkzter662(4:43:01): hey there
pmtorrone(4:43:12): hi
Funkzter662(4:43:23): how r you?
pmtorrone(4:43:30): great, who is this?
Funkzter662(4:43:44): I�m stacey
pmtorrone(4:43:46): hi
Funkzter662(4:43:58): what are you doin?
pmtorrone(4:44:07): writing about bots
Funkzter662(4:44:17): whats your name again?
pmtorrone(4:44:21): phil
Funkzter662(4:44:37): :-)
Funkzter662(4:45:37): uh hello? why aren�t you talking?
pmtorrone(4:45:43): what should i say?
Funkzter662(4:45:56): do u think so?
pmtorrone(4:46:02): what?
Funkzter662(4:46:18): i dont remember anyomre lol
pmtorrone(4:46:23): what are you wearing?
Funkzter662(4:46:33): socks :-)
pmtorrone(4:46:41): where are you?
Funkzter662(4:46:56): in my room
pmtorrone(4:47:02): how old are you?
Funkzter662(4:47:11): ripe old age of 17 ;-)
pmtorrone(4:47:50): do you have a webcam?
Funkzter662(4:48:01): hmm� nope.
Funkzter662(4:48:13): :-p
pmtorrone(4:48:41): bye
Funkzter662(4:48:51): aww� cant we talk some more?
pmtorrone(4:49:24): bush or kerry?
Funkzter662(4:49:34): lol
pmtorrone(4:49:39): which one?
Funkzter662(4:49:50): I dunn oabout that one
Funkzter662(4:50:55): Are you still there?
Funkzter662(4:52:03): ???
Funkzter662: You have been talking to a computer! One of your friends is reading the whole conversation and laughing it up right now!  GET EVEN! Have the bot talk to all your friends by visiting chattingaimbot.com

Chatroom rage?
We looked around after writing this article to see if there was anyone else doing anything like this, and it turns out there�s an entire group of people tricking others (using humans) to show themselves on webcams and then posting their photos. Here�s the how-to on that as well, careful out there kids�we think this is going to be the next Punk�d.

[matt @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

man, that can seriously burn someone. i checked out the webcam http://www.furi-d.com/chat/ link also. yeah, definitely can get people into some big trouble with that stuff. niiice

[Osoroco @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

this bot is really neat, it's well done. it also works with ICQ. I wish it was available for MSN

[levein @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

Matt, your link is so funny, gonna blog it.

[Adam Zeldin @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I set ti up with a different bot! smarterchild lol!

[Faboon @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

That idea with smarter child is cool !

[Tyson @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

we want to download AOL IM on this computer. We have IM on our home computer and would like it here also, but don't know how to get it. can you help?

[Webmaster Forum @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

Are you on a school computer or what ? If so most schools block it from being downloaded on their computers .

[Denny @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

bush or kerry?

[Sean @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I just got caught by someone with a tool like this, glad I didn't say too much :-P. The link above doesn't work so does anyone know of where I can find it now? Also any way to add your own questions/responses? Want to get some friendly revenge on some co-workers. Thanks.

[kirsten @ Dec 29th 2005 8:48PM]

yo yo yo