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Lycos Declares War on Spam Servers

Posted by michael on from the spam-it-forward dept.

Psychotext writes "The Register have posted a story about a new screensaver from Lycos that targets known spam servers (taken from spamcop and verified by hand) with traffic in order to raise their bandwidth costs and hopefully price them out of the game. Lycos state that this is not a DDOS as Lycos monitors the site's responsiveness and throttles back when the site starts to falter. The screensaver is available here for Mac OSX, Mac OS9 and Windows, though you might need to lie about what country you are from." Reader JohnGrahamCumming writes "As part of preparing for the MIT Spam Conference I've put together a survey on what people are experiencing out there with spam, what they are doing about and followed it up with a test of different views of an inbox filled with spam and ham. You can take the test and be part of the survey results in January."

14 of 567 comments (clear)

  1. Lycos? by Saeger · · Score: 5, Funny
    I can barely hear what Lycos is saying... but it sounds like... "I'm not dead yet!"

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    Power to the Peaceful
  2. Re:Fighting spam with more crap? by bpd1069 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Fight fire with fire...

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  3. That is actually funny! by Daath · · Score: 4, Funny

    We all know: This is NOT spam!!

    Now we got: This is NOT a DDOS!!

    Oh well, we gotta try a few things to try and bring the spam down ;)

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    Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
    1. Re:That is actually funny! by AndroidCat · · Score: 3, Funny

      Just tell all the P2P networks that the last piece of the lastest song by Boy_Band or Stacked_17 is at that IP address. They'll get a not a DDoS and maybe a visit from the RIAA as a bonus.

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      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  4. Re:Fighting spam with more crap? by typhoonius · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, but...they're spammers.

    It's like the Indiana Jones movies. Melting people's faces is bad. Melting Nazi's faces is awesome. Because, honestly, they're Nazis.

    I'm not saying spammers are Nazis, just that we should melt their faces.

  5. Re:Fighting spam with more crap? by vyruss000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    (raising clenched fist looking at the sky)

    DAMN YOU, GODWIN! :)

  6. Re:This is NOT A DDOS!! by pyrros · · Score: 3, Funny

    Let's call it Distributed Reduction-Degradion Of Service: DR-DOS

    /me ducks for cover

  7. Re:This is NOT A DDOS!! by logic+hack · · Score: 5, Funny
    Actually, it's a great idea, now only if a cool Open source dev would make an open version of this and take away that whole throttling thing
    I believe it's called a slashdotting.
  8. Re:Zombies by MrNemesis · · Score: 2, Funny

    Spamming units typically have a morale of 9 or more, while most ISP's have only an average morale of 7 - and this screensaver only gives a +1 boost to leadership. I know who I'd rather roll my 2D6 against... ;)

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    Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
  9. Yes by IamGarageGuy+2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    You scare me.

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    Stay tuned for new sig...
  10. Re:What a move... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Poor innocent people who don't upgrade their OS either because they are stupid or pirated it. I feel so sorry for them. :'-(

  11. Re:it seems to me ... by kfg · · Score: 2, Funny

    That is, unless one of you out there owns a major backbone carrier (in which case, I'm single).

    I'm an invertebrate, you insensitive clod, but you can thank me for the girlfriend later.

    KFG

  12. two dollars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Dude, I don't know what the fuck is going on, but you better pay up.

    Sam Leahy
    Collections Dept.
    Northeast Gas Corp.

  13. Re:This is NOT A DDOS!! by johannesg · · Score: 1, Funny

    How about using Multiple-Source Degradation Of Service? The reason I'm saying this is because your system has known incompatibilities with Windows...