Screensaver tackles spam websites

[Mark Holtz]

Hmmmm..... okay.....

From BBC News:

Screensaver tackles spam websites

Internet portal Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail.

Lycos hopes it will make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers soar by keeping their servers running flat out.

The net firm estimates that if enough people sign up and download the tool, spammers could end up paying to send out terabytes of data.

FULL ARTICLE HERE (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4051553.stm)

[SimpleSimon]

I love it - spam the spammers! :up:

[pjmrt]

Gotta love it.

Could this mean cyberwar?

[Redster]

One problem I see with this is the thousands of zombie machines that spammers have hijacked. These poor machines will be hit by requests too,, knocking them off the web and very possible overloading their internet provider which may also affect your connection.

[Mark Holtz]

The screensaver has been pulled...

Lycos Pulls Anti-Spam 'Vigilante' Campaign

Just days after Lycos Europe's launch of an anti-spam DDoS tool raised eyebrows in the security space, the company appears to have scrapped the campaign.

Earlier this week, the company released a downloadable screensaver programmed to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against known spam sites, but the move sparked a shooting war with spammers and attracted condemnation from security researchers.

FULL ARTICLE HERE (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1735539,00.asp)