Shoutbox

I encourage all Europeans to join this action.

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Screensaver tackles spam websites
Spam subject lines in e-mail inbox, BBC
Sites selling spam goods and services are being targeted
Net users are getting the chance to fight back against 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.

Cost curve

"We've never really solved the big problem of spam which is that its so damn cheap and easy to do," said Malte Pollmann, spokesman for Lycos Europe.

"In the past we have built up the spam filtering systems for our users," he said, "but now we are going to go one step further."
   
Before now users have never had the chance to be a bit more offensive
Malte Pollmann, Lycos
"We've found a way to make it much higher cost for spammers by putting a load on their servers."

By getting thousands of people to download and use the screensaver, Lycos hopes to get spamming websites constantly running at almost full capacity.

Mr Pollmann said there was no intention to stop the spam websites working by subjecting them with too much data to cope with.

He said the screensaver had been carefully written to ensure that the amount of traffic it generated from each user did not overload the web.

"Every single user will contribute three to four megabytes per day," he said, "about one MP3 file."

But, he said, if enough people sign up spamming websites could be force to pay for gigabytes of traffic every single day.

Lycos did not want to use e-mail to fight back, said Mr Pollmann.

"That would be fighting one bad thing with another bad thing," he said.

Slow down

The sites being targeted are those mentioned in spam e-mail messages and which sell the goods and services on offer.

Typically these sites are different to those that used to send out spam e-mail and they typically only get a few thousand visitors per day.

The list of sites that the screensaver will target is taken from real-time blacklists generated by organisations such as Spamcop. To limit the chance of mistakes being made, Lycos is using people to ensure that the sites are selling spam goods.

As these sites rarely use advertising to offset hosting costs, the burden of high-bandwidth bills could make spam too expensive, said Mr Pollmann.

Sites will also slow down under the weight of data requests. Early results show that response times of some sites have deteriorated by up to 85%.

Users do not have to be registered users of Lycos to download and use the screensaver.

While working, the screensaver shows the websites that are being bothered with requests for data.

The screensaver is due to be launched across Europe on 1 December and before now has only been trialled in Sweden.

Despite the soft launch, Mr Pollmann said that the screensaver had been downloaded more than 20,000 times in the last four days.

"There's a huge user demand to not only filter spam day-by-day but to do something more," he said "Before now users have never had the chance to be a bit more offensive."

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Know more: http://makelovenotspam.com/intl

yeah.. I downloaded it yesterday.. I love it I would have never expected this from Lycos..  It's about time those spammers get to experience the feeling we feel: irritated
Is it legal though? Lycos says it is, but it's on the edge, isn't it?

wow! that's a great idea from these Lycos people...i'll download this for sure..
who cares if it is legal ? This spam so f****ng gets on my nerves !!!

Edit: Could someone actually mirror the screensaver because their website is hopelessly slow dDoSed, hacked or whatever...it's down

.. no chance to download it....

It's only for Europe? I wonder why...

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Originally posted by AndreY
Edit: Could someone actually mirror the screensaver because their website is hopelessly slow

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Maybe the spammers are fighting back with their own DOS attacks...

makelovenotspam.com is down
.. possibly by a dDoS attack
see this: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39175578,00.htm

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within hours of the makelovenotspam.com site being launched, the original front page was replaced with a simple message:

"Yes, attacking spammers is wrong. You know this, you shouldn't be doing it. Your IP address and request have been logged and will be reported to your ISP for further action.

Finnish antivirus firm F-Secure, which advised users not to participate in Lycos' campaign because of "possible legal problems", suspects the site has been hacked by a pro-spam group because "they definitely would have a motive to attack the site"."

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lol

quote:

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Originally posted by WDZ
Maybe the spammers are fighting back with their own DOS attacks...

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Lol, I noticed that, too

You can get it from p2p, hopefully.

you can get it from http://download2.makelovenotspam.com/screensavers...screensaver_en.exe, however it wont work yet cos the servers are still down

thanks saral
Lycos denied that makelovenotspam.com got hacked. They said it was a hoax. Read more at zdnet.co.uk
Their servers are still down

The servers are up again,
Europans, please join the fight against spam!
Americans can join aswell, just choose "International English".
makelovenotspam.com
(I know that this is not the best way to fight spam but the only way we have)

I might try this to get revenge on the spammers............ will Omar be effected?

well its kinda lame, but i like it

Lets kill th3