Lately I've been getting a ton of spam on my MSN Instant Messenger account. It is quit annoying. I could of just modified my privacy settings in my client (on pidgin Tools .. Privacy, select MSN and block only users on buddy list). But I do a lot of work with open source and communities, and would like to have people who need to contact , actually be able to contact me.

I found a few solutions. First was logging into account.live.com and modify my shared profile. Under social, I changed the permissions to just me. Hopefully that helps a bit. My news step will be using a pidgin plug-in called Bot Sentry. Which will ask users not in your buddy list or approved list to answer simple questions before the message goes through. Ex. Please spell out the number 5. So it should stop all that automated spam.

If I have to go that route, then I will be sure and post a follow up.