Make Love, not Spam!
p2pnet.net News:- Lycos Europe is now has a screen saver with a difference.
Called Make Love, not Spam, it’s a program for Windows or MacOS that, “constantly visits websites for which spam has been sent,” says Heise Online, quoting Lycos as saying, “The more users download and use the screen saver, the lower the performance of the sites sending out the spam, and the greater the costs for the operators.”
It’s apparently counting on a large number of its European users - 20 million, it claims - to download the screen saver. But users don’t have to be registered with Lycos to download and use it.
“If it is activated, it shows a map indicating where the web server currently being attacked is located,” says Heise. “Various permanently displayed live data show how many users are currently taking part in the attack and whether the performance of the server under attack is suffering to the extent desired.”
Sites the screensaver will target are on real-time blacklists generated by organisations such as Spamcop, says the BBC, quoting Lycos Europe spokesman Malte Pollmann as saying to limit the chance of mistakes, 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,” says the BBC, adding, “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%.”
However, “According to Joerg Heidrich, a legal consultant at Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, Lycos’ call on people to take matters into their own hands is questionable at best,” Heise states.
“The general consensus among lawyers is that an intentional DoS attack with the aim of taking servers out of commission constitutes a manipulation of data in accordance with Section 303a as well as computer sabotage in accordance with 303b of the German Penal Code. Heidrich did, however, doubt that these laws apply if the servers under attack are not shut down, but their performance merely inhibited, as intended in the Lycos project.”
Unfortunately, Make Love, not Spam only covers Italy, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
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See:-
screen saver - Lycos users are to attack spammers, Heise Online, November 26, 2004
real-time blacklists - Screensaver tackles spam websites, BBC News Online, November 29, 2004
November 29th, 2004 at 10:52 pm
This could be the start of something BIG - and not just for SPAM ; p
November 30th, 2004 at 2:33 am
It looks like they’re worldwide, now.
November 30th, 2004 at 6:46 pm
The download is diabolical , took me forever and had to install the cursed flash player to get it(removed it after) for those who cannot be bothered to trawl through the tons of crap just to get it you can bag a copy on the ed2k link below, works a treat
ed2k://|file|MLNS_screensaver_en.exe|1834847|D30F1CCA6775804A2CC0292737FB0BD5|h=3YLQDQ6X5KLJGBZ3NL52FREPCOPSWFSO|/
December 1st, 2004 at 12:20 am
I canT download the screensaver. I’m in Canada
December 1st, 2004 at 3:23 am
http://www.zdnet.nl/downloads.cfm?id=40905
December 1st, 2004 at 7:32 am
There seems to be a lot of people out there trying to stop spam. But there
is a very simple method that has never been used to my knowledge, that would
be way more effective than any of the current techniques. Here is is:
How to stop email spam:
One unique feature of spam: The sender is almost always spoofed. This
solution works in that case (If it is not, we can always trace it back to
its sender, so there are easier ways to deal with that)
1) Before the email gets sent from the server , it must record {sender
email address, hash, recipient email address} for each email to be sent.
a. hash -> Just a hash of the email to (relatively) uniquely identify
the contents of the email
2) The server sends the email
3) When receiving server gets the email, it must:
a. Generate a hash for the received email
b. Send a CONFIRMATION back with the {sender email, hash, recipient
email} information.
i. If the server
recognizes the set, it will return a message saying that it was a valid
email, and email is delivered to recipient. -OR-
ii. If server does
not recognize the set, it sends a message back saying that the email was
spoofed, and the email is deleted and never delivered to destination
The beauty of all this is that you don’t need to worry about valid messages
being accidentally deleted. Even in the case where a server crashes and
loses it’s {sender email, hash, recipient email} list, you can actually
still ensure no messages are lost.
Now, this algorithm would need to be incorporated into a protocol.
It’s all pretty simple. The problem with this solution is that ALL email
servers must implement this in order for this to work, so it must be made
part of a new protocol, such as the next version of POP or SMTP, for
example. So it would take a few years before it could destroy spam. But what
a wonderful day that would be, for all of us.
If you have any questions or need more information, feel free to write back
Sincerely,
Ian Mills
ianmills2 @ kittymail.com
December 2nd, 2004 at 11:59 pm
Yeah, I hope the site is back soon.
December 3rd, 2004 at 12:09 am
It’s not so easy, really. Many people own domains and send through their ISP’s mail servers (see blocked port 25). The same goes for people working from home.
December 7th, 2004 at 8:47 pm
Seems these guys ripped the idea off another company called SpamItBack (www.spamitback.com), which does the same thing, except much better & with much more features. (You can choose the spammers you want, etc).