NationStates Jolt Archive

You've all heard it, Lycos has a downloadable screensaver at http://www.makelovenotspam.com which will take part in DDoS attacks on known spammers' servers as it runs.

Now that 2/3 e-mails is spam and the FBI and international counterparts refuse to do their job, is it time for the ISPs and their customers to reclaim their bandwidth by force?

Or is it an assault on the fundamental freedoms that most of the world's countries don't recognise anyway?

I appreciate your thoughts.

Having read a couple of articles about this it really worries me, for various people taking the law into their own hands reasons but more importantnly the amount of network traffic that these things produce is going to damage internal networks and isps themselves.

From http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/26/lycos_europe_spam_blitz/

A spokesman for Lycos in Germany told The Register he believed that the tool could generate 3.4MB in traffic on a daily basis. When 10m screensavers are downloaded and used, the numbers quickly add up, to 33TB of 'useless' IP traffic. Seems Lycos may hurt not just spammers


That could start to get noticed.

They probably will include new dedicated servers to this cause.

3.4mb extra from each person is really nothing. That might be the equivalent of viewing 6 web pages which have lots of images.

I like the idea, but I don't think it'll work honestly....

Taking the law into your own hands is perfectly okay with me, my concern is that... it could simply flood ISPs and such, while the companies probably make enough money off their spamming to deal with the increased bandwidth.

I like the idea, but I don't think it'll work honestly....

Taking the law into your own hands is perfectly okay with me, my concern is that... it could simply flood ISPs and such, while the companies probably make enough money off their spamming to deal with the increased bandwidth.
Do companies actually make money off of spam? Is anyone moronic enough to buy the crap they sell?

Right now it really isn’t taking “the law” into your own hands

There is no law that covers these guys right now … and a DOS when consensual is not illegal (not any more then going to the server (if it was a web server) was before) you are consenting to use your internet connection.

Currently no laws against it

I think it is a great idea

As for hurting internal networks … not a chance ours hasn’t even flinched (we have about 3.5 k computers here about 400 running it) if they choose to use their bandwidth as such no problem (they got dedicated min and max bandwidth) do they don’t interfere with each other and the internal network is over 2x the bandwidth of our main trunk in … no problem

Isp’s may see an issue being they don’t truly guarantee a minimum (at least not cable) as a neighborhood bogs down the switch/router and eats up trunk bandwidth it could slow other people in your immediate area down so watch were you do it at

But I have not looked at the actual bandwidth being used … it may be nothing (time to get the packet sniffer setup)

Do companies actually make money off of spam? Is anyone moronic enough to buy the crap they sell?
I've wondered that myself. Personally if someone advertizes in an annoying way I try not to do business with him.

Doesn't really matter whether they are wasting their money spamming or not, the end result is the same, the Internet is being clogged with their BS. Something has to be done about it, and who knows, this could be a rare occasion where the international private sector creates a better solution than national government.

As the spammonkey of this company; I am not surprised.

I used to fight it by hand(ie scripts and tools) as the company didn't see the value of paying the big fees.

In one years time I logged 1.4 million spams for a company of 200 people.

It wen't significatnly up with the shrub passed his crap called "can spam"

It basically legalized it as you only had to change your spam to inlcude a legal address and a method of removal.

Never mind the fact that it basically moved spamming operations off shore where the laws don't work. Biggest spam tool is yahoo. Biggest countries were South America, Eastern Europe and Asia. India is up and comming. Opps forgot the Nigerians! ;)

The current laws aren't going to do much after all; you just have to delete it.

Besides, it's not spam it's advertising! :rolleyes:

Conspiracy theory: Maybe they want it to go to crap so they can implement in internet email stamp arrangement like snail mail ;)

BTW: We purchased Mailfrontiers solution and it is slick! Makes antispamming a lowlevel job now. It only trickles in.....

As the spammonkey of this company; I am not surprised.

I used to fight it by hand(ie scripts and tools) as the company didn't see the value of paying the big fees.

In one years time I logged 1.4 million spams for a company of 200 people.

It wen't significatnly up with the shrub passed his crap called "can spam"

It basically legalized it as you only had to change your spam to inlcude a legal address and a method of removal.

Never mind the fact that it basically moved spamming operations off shore where the laws don't work. Biggest spam tool is yahoo. Biggest countries were South America, Eastern Europe and Asia. India is up and comming. Opps forgot the Nigerians! ;)

The current laws aren't going to do much after all; you just have to delete it.

Besides, it's not spam it's advertising! :rolleyes:

Conspiracy theory: Maybe they want it to go to crap so they can implement in internet email stamp arrangement like snail mail ;)

BTW: We purchased Mailfrontiers solution and it is slick! Makes antispamming a lowlevel job now. It only trickles in.....


Just wanted to point out the site is down

When I got curious why

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/


In an interesting twist, apparently one of the spam sites under attack from Lycos' "Make Love not Spam" operation has turned the tables. The front page of a spammer site called www.moretgage.info (which used to sell cheap mortgage loans) has been changed to contain a Meta Refresh tag, redirecting all web traffic to...www.makelovenotspam.com.
As an end result, depending on how the Lycos client works, the screen savers downloaded from makelovenotspam.com might be attacking the download site itself.
In another development, Lycos made a statement that this site was not defaced two days ago (see our weblog post on November 30th). However, we've received three independent reports from users who saw the defacement and even made screen shots of it...including one report from an editor of a computer magazine.



That’s GREAT lol so the utility because of one redirect hits their site :) too lol that is awesome
LOL

Hehehe...well, it's hardly a surprise the first shot of the war is a shot in the foot. But it is nice to know that an ISP has the balls to try.

Hehehe...well, it's hardly a surprise the first shot of the war is a shot in the foot. But it is nice to know that an ISP has the balls to try.
Oh yeah I like the idea but damn lol its still funny :)