lurking, are you?

not for long, perhaps.

my AIM account has been active for years and years. before AIM was cool, i was on it. i may have been the reason AIM became cool in the first place, who knows.

my ICQ account is one of the originals. while membership on ICQ is now numbering in the hundreds of millions, my account number is 744908 - i've been on ICQ since the beginning of instant messaging.

my buddy list? hundreds. active? most of them.

so what's the point?

one of the things about AIM that is both cool and not cool is the ability to lurk - to have someone else on your buddy list but that person doesn't know you have them on there. you can read all their profiles, their away messages, see when they're on and off, etc.

over the last year, probably a dozen people have been outed as lurkers because of viruses - you know, the ones where someone "sends" you a message saying something like, "hi!! I just edited one of our pictures in photosuite, you think I should put it to myspace?" and then there's a URL to click on? and then kaboom - you've got a virus because you download something hoping to see pictures or whatever. and the next thing you know, AIM sends a message to everyone on your list who's logged in.

and i'm always logged in.

and some of my lurkers are then like, "holy crap!" and are embarrassed that they were outed.

and others won't respond at all.

and a small minority are like, "hey! how're ya?" like nothing strange is going on.

haha. well, at any rate, this message is a warning to either:
a) beware of messages from people who claim to have edited pictures with you in them
b) out yourselves before you're outed involuntarily

honestly, i think the whole thing is rather funny, but it does make me wonder... who's out there lurking and watching...?

besides George W, that is.