Man loses job thanks to IM virus

A virus can transmit previous IM conversations to a user's buddy list without his or her consent - and with disastrous consequences. Virus attacks are not yet frequent on instant-messaging applications, but the latest threat is likely to send a shiver down the spine of all IM users. A businessman whose computer had been infected by a virus found that his entire buddy list had been sent a record of all his IM conversations, said Derek O'Carroll, managing director of IM software vendor IMLogic yesterday.

O'Carroll was speaking at a panel discussion on the war against spam at a security event aligned with the Microsoft TechEd conference in Amsterdam. He said the businessman, a vice president at a US-based company, discovered that IM conversations stored by the application had been sent to colleagues on his buddy list, which included partners at the company.

Read Full Story