Spam the spammers: Lycos
p2pnet.net News:- If you’ve wondered just how much people hate spam, wonder no more.
A couple of days back, Lycos Germany launched a vigilante screen-saver to beat people sending out advertising junk mail at their own game.
Spam the spammers, in other words.
The idea is simple: people who’ve had enough of garbage emails install Lycos’ Make Love, not Spam, a Windows / MacOS application that surfs targets on real-time blacklists from organisations such as Spamcop. Their computes then spam websites touting goods and services mentioned in junk-mails.
And you don’t even have to be registered with Lycos to use it.
As F-Secure’s blog points out, ” 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.”
It was still doing that at 7:25 am Pacific.
The response has been so great that, “Some major internet backbones are preventing access to the new Lycos ‘anti-spam’ screensaver web site at www.MakeLoveNotSpam.com,” says Britain’s Netcraft.
“At first, these difficulties were thought to be as a result of the web site’s success or revenge attacks by spammers. It now appears that some major Internet backbones are denying access to the IP address used to host www.MakeLoveNotSpam.com.
“Tracing a route to the host from Netcraft’s main site in the UK reveals that access to the MakeLoveNotSpam.com site has been blackholed by Global Crossing’s worldwide network, leaving the site accessible from some areas but not others.”
Netcraft has a dynamically updating chart of site performance for MakeLoveNotSpam.com here.
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See:-
garbage emails – Make Love, not Spam!, p2pnet, November 29, 2004
revenge attacks – Lycos Screensaver Site Blocked by Internet Backbones, Netcraft, December 2, 2004
Meta Refresh tag – Spammers fight back, F-Secure, December 2, 2004
December 2nd, 2004 at 7:16 pm
anyone know if itll be available here?
December 3rd, 2004 at 3:35 pm
You really think Lycos Germany has your interest at heart with this program?
Don’t forget they decide who gets the Denial oF Service (DoS) attack.
What makes you think they will really target spammers?
They could rather target their competition, people they don’t like…
This is more about censorship and disruption of service than stopping spam!
On a side note some BitTorrent servers are reportedly under attack.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5473754.html
Maybe lycos didn’t like them? Just a though.
Also Jon, if you’re reading this, the p2pnet “User Registration” doesn’t seem to work.
December 4th, 2004 at 12:01 am
Spam the Spammers is a great idea!!
HERE IS THE CHALLENGE….
Why doesnt someone write a program that automatically places ALL spam received in a ‘Spam’ file which will soon become humungous in size.
The whole file is then automatically sent to to every spammer from whom spam is ever received – each and every time (a) new spam is received.
Then the company trying to sell in this insidious, unethical and slimy manner, as well as the companys who allow their servers etc to be used for this purpose, should be auto-placed on a Blacklist register which should be used as a no-go list of sellers – at any price – by buyers.
This should include the major corporations who hide behind spammers by denying their connection to the lists that are distributing their products.
They all need to continuosly swallow their own poison by getting buried in their own trash and by having their servers shut down regularly through overloading.
Starve the Spammers and their hosts out of business!