18-year-old spimmer arrested

Young New York resident Anthony Greco was recently arrested at Los Angeles Airport in what federal prosecutors said was the first criminal case involving "spim" (spam via instant-messaging). He is "suspected of broadcasting 1.5 million ads for pornography and cheap mortgages, the Los Angeles Times reports. He is also allegedly an accomplished extortionist. Prosecutors said they "lured him" to L.A. for "what he expected would be a meeting with the president of MySpace.com," a blogging service popular among teens. "Greco had threatened to tell other spammers how he sent the unsolicited instant messages to MySpace users last fall if he wasn't given an exclusive marketing contract with the company, according to a sworn investigator's statement filed in Los Angeles federal court." About 39% of IM users under 30 have received spim (66% of 19-to-30-year-old Americans IM), according to figures cited by ClickZ Stats (figures for teen IM-ers weren't available as of this writing). Although not as common as spam, serious spim growth is expected - "from 1.2 billion messages by year-end 2004 to 17.9 billion messages in 2008," InfoWorld reports. Here's the latest news on spim viruses at ZDNET.