Instant Messaging on MSN to cost money?

[terryg11]

Has anyone heard about this? My daughter and her friends who are all of thirteen years old have been passing around this email that's informing them that IM will cost money as of September of this year but if they send the message to 18 of their friends then their IM or MSN icon or whatever will turn blue and then they will be in for free. Whatever, I won't let her do it because I checked real quickly and couldn't find any official message at the website(maybe I just missed it?) and since this is our only computer at the moment am worried it might be somebody's way of screwing with the computer.

Sometime's I worry about what my daughter who is still learning her way around the internet will bring in. Not worried about inappropriate stuff yet but things that could hinder the computer's operating.

[Chan790]

1. It's not real

and nobody's going to mess with your computer. It's a way of messing with something much more fun: gullible people.

[terryg11]

2. thanks

it gets annoying once in a while the email gets sent to our address instead of hers and I have to see this big warning about it. These girls talk at school so you would think they would have it figured out by now and quit sending it out

[CatholicEdHead]

3. Quick search found nothing valid

There was a BBC article from 2001 that talked about the possibility. There are no recent announcements, and it is because of IM marketshare. Nobody would use it if they had to pay for it. It is probably in some Redmond business plan but this is probably a fake if not a phishing email (look for weird http address). I would delete it and ignore it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1189119.stm

[Ariana Celeste]

4. no... its kind of like that myspace thing

where people post bulletins (claiming to be from Tom) saying that myspace will start charging, or your page will be deleted, or whatever, if you don't repost the bulletin.

[ghostsofgiants]

7. Or mass user messages on ICQ, or that stupid Facebook group "THEY'RE TRYING TO SHUT DOWN FACEBOOK!"

Or whatever.

[ghostsofgiants]

5. Haha, that old email?

That's a chain email that has been going around for years in dozens of different forms. (MSN, ICQ, Hotmail, MySpace, Facebook, etc.)

[DS1]

6. It's the new Ted Stevens bill. He's tired of his tubes being filled

[SOteric]

8. That's what we call

"a load of crap."

If any of the Instant Messaging giants decide to make major changes to their delivery system, they've got much better ways of conducting their business than relying on teenaged girls to send messages to 18 of their friends.

This type of e-mail has been making the rounds on the internet for years. It's still a hoax.

[Jamastiene]

9. If it looks like a chain letter, and smells like a chain letter,

it probably is a chain letter. That has all the earmarkings of a chain letter. Please teach your daughter to not pass those things on. They clog up the internet (waste bandwidth) and make your friends avoid you.

[terryg11]

10. yep

so far so good, told her just to delete them until instructed otherwise(by me of course).