Instant Messaging now under serious threat from Worms

(Visit link: IM And P2P Malware Threats Nearly Triple - TechWeb News )

Instant Messaging has been to me for some years now - to be a solution looking for a problem. When Email technologies was first released, it was hailed as the next greatest business tool for communication. While it is now truly mainstream (in fact no self respecting businessman can afford to do business without one), there are always new technologies coming into play. SMS (then MMS) and Instant Messaging jumped to the forefront as even faster and more real time means to communicate. While IM is still a poor means to communicate with the public, businesses are using it more for internal communications (I am still unconvinced that it actually makes personnel more efficient or productive - the realspace Telephone works a whole lot better in my opinion).

With the growth of use of IM (and P2P) there is the consequential growth of IM worms and viruses. Apparently here it is reported that 270% jump has occurred. Does this mean that IM is here to stay or become mainstay (pursuant to my theory of how technology becomes mainstream when they become target or used for criminal purposes)? Unfortunately security threats continue to grow despite multilevel efforts to curb the problems.