Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 5:12 am Post subject: "Make Love Not Spam" |
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Interesting idea...
| Quote: |
Screenscraper here to fight spam
[Isn't this illegal? Ed.]
By Nick Farrell: Tuesday 30 November 2004, 10:30
AN ISP CALLED Lycos has come up with a way of fighting spam that attacks the spammers servers.
All you have to do is load a screensaver - "Make Love Not Spam" - available from Lycos Europe and it will requests data from websites that are mentioned in bulk mailings.
Lycos' plan is that if thousands screensaver users sign up, the websites' servers will overload or at least blow their bandwidth bills, yet derive no income for them because there would be no marketable response.
Apparently the screen saver will only increase traffic on the spammers' servers by 95% and is unlikely to cause a total meltdown. This is because a denial of service attack could be considered illegal in some parts and Lycos is a legit outfit.
The websites have been chosen from spammers' blacklists selected by anti-spam watchdogs such as Spamcop. To make doubly sure there is no mistake, Lycos says it also checks to make sure that the sites are selling spam goods.
The downside is that it could tigger the Interweb by sending too much useless traffic into the net, however the number of spammers on blacklists are quite small so this is unlikely.
More likely is that the spammers will keep changing their servers, which is annoying but not lethal to their business. We couldn't find out how the screen saver involved making love, but we will look forward to finding out. |
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19953
What the heck is "tigger the interweb"? Is Poo somehow involved? |
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