How to protect your privacy on Yahoo Messenger

Posted on April 24, 2009 at 5:14 am

Yahoo Messenger, also popularly known as it’s initial YM, is one of the most used messenger applications available today. But having said that, it has also become a platform for spammers and malicious users to spread unsolicited information containing links to web based promotional materials, spam blogs (also called splogs), web pages encoded with malware, and even real crooks that will try to take information from you.

The guys from Yahoo! recognize this issue. With a little button click and YM tinkering, you should be able to block all unwanted people or bots from sending you messages. First I will show you how to block individual YM addresses. If you don’t want to receive messages from a specific YM user, follow the steps below. Click the Messenger menu then choose Preferences.

The YM Preferences window will show and under the category called “Ignore List” choose “Ignore only the people below” then click the add button:

Enter the YM address of the person you want to block then click the “Ignore” button:

Click the OK button to save the changes.

After adding the YM address of the person on the ignore list, you will not receive messages from this person. You can always remove the YM address from the ignore list if incase you want the person to be allowed to send you messages.

An even more restrictive way to block unwanted messages is to allow only people from your contact list to send you messages. You can do this by choosing the “Ignore anyone who is not on my Messenger List” option.