Messenger has been flooded with accounts that want to be my friend, just in the past day.?

Spammers got your address somehow - probably on an infected computer of one of your contacts, who is unaware of the problem. (There is a 'trojan' malware that skims Contacts lists and saved mails for all usable mailing addresses.)

*** To stop spam messages, in the Messenger window click preferences then Ignore list. In the next window check Ignore anyone not on my friend's list. Click ok. ***

Notify ALL your contacts to change their passwords to long ones of at least 12 characters using mixed symbols - that usually removes the sly trojan 'address grabber'.

Just to be very sure your computer is not infected, you and your contacts should run both an anti-virus and spyware/malware scans, updated and separately - even more than one malware scan, or Trend Micro's Housecall for an online a-v scan. (*** in 'Safe Mode with Networking' is the only truly effective method - click F8 repeatedly when the screen first lights on boot-up, then arrow keys and Enter to navigate. ***) Re-boot into Safe Mode for each separate scan. These are the best free anti-malware programs.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_...

http://www.superantispyware.com/

(Ribbit)