Screensaver tackles spam websites
 

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 will it 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."

"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."



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4051553.stm

surely that would be classed as a dos attack and illegal, even if it's a spam website.

great!
less mailers less competition = more money :winkwink:

Most bp's are already slow as fuck, this is gonna fuck a few ones up

old news

Sounds like legalized denial of service attacks.

I'll put that right next to my corporate censorship file.

-Dino

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh
First death threats, non stop phone calls and anti spam stalkers
Now they can legally DDOS your website.

What a bunch of idiots :2 cents:

I know that it's illegal but what is a spammer going to do go to court and admit he's doing something illegal?...

lycos will end up with shit on thier own plate.. spammers are unruly all we need to build is a trojan that will auto insert into peoples computers without them knowing and do the exact same thing to thier servers mabye they would like terrabytes of bandwidth used as well and most spammers know how to mask themself and arent afraid of sending a *REAL* DDoS attack mabye via Botnet of 20,000 servers for example.. they are just begging for some spam group or renegade spammer to destroy thier servers and put lycos out business permentely

just my 2 cents on the subject very big possibility of this tho thats for sure.

SPAMMER! die.

hahah watch all the spammers cry in this thread.

Great Idea and no Its not illegal becasue DDoS attacks agasint a SPAMMER whos not doing legal buisiness would be considered a civil matter.

It's not the spammers we care about - it's when this 'tool' turns against legitimate users either by defects in technology or alterior agendas.

:2 cents:

-Dino

it's happened to many others already. :thumbsup

Interesting.

I'm curious, doesn't Patriot Act make this kind of statement eligible for all-expenses paid trip to Cuba?

:Graucho

-Dino

It will not gonna work ...desperate attempt from Lycos to find new users and that's all .

And who gets the bill for all this extra bandwidth travelling around?

And we all know that anti-spam websites NEVER make mistakes or falsely accuse someone of spamming or supporting spam, don't we?

Looks like I'll be broke soon :(

nope sorry bro.. I never said I had any intention or even the resources to even pull something like that off.. however I do happen to know quite afew people with the resources and the temper and willingness to pull this off if so inclined. so you can kiss my ass with that comment and what makes you think im not already in cuba or possibly some other forign country. what makes you think I am real mabye I am a figment of your imagination and reality has spun awide hehe :) mabye I am the ghost in the machine.. damn I watch too many movies :)

My thoughts exactly! We send mailers out to members in regards to member specific requests and we were actually contacted by one of these organizations accusing us of spamming. I see a class action lawsuit against Lycos from non-spamming site owners because of over zealous anti-spam crusaders wrongly blacklisting legitimate commerce sites.

If you fight fire with fire, you will live and die by the sword.

Spammers go to Federal Prison for their crimes. It should be interesting to see what Happens if this backfires in Lycos' face.