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Lycos Anti-Spam Screensaver Brings Down Spam Sites
ChairmanMeow writes "According to BBC News, the screensaver released by Lycos Europe that targets spam websites has been a bit too successful at targeting spam sites, bringing down two sites, with a third responding intermittently, and raising concerns that the screensaver amounts to a DDoS attack against spam sites. Of course, spammers deserve to be punished, but will DDoS attacks against spam websites help to curb the problem of spam?" While the screensaver allegedly throttles back when a site slows, it would seem it's being a bit overzealous.
Using a DDOS on spammers is kind of like sending an arsonist to burn down the house of a murderer...
Really,
:grrr:
Is there anything legally wrong with this?
It's not a "bot" army in that the owners of the PC's opted in to do this.
-nB
--
Damn 2 min between posts BS has got to go. Should be limited to within topics or something
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I don't care if the spammers' servers are DDoSed. They can take their fucked-up business model and shove it, as far as I am concerned.
Good on Lycos for finally having the balls to stand up to these guys. The spammers have been stealing bandwidth off all of us for far too long now.
gadgetophile.com
Who controls the list of "spam sites"? What are the criteria for becomming a victim? I would personally like this process to be transparent before I encourage anyone to participate - I do think they have the best intentions, but the potential for abuse is a bit scary.
That's what sucks about the spam war.. the good guys have to be careful how they deal with the problem to avoid accidentally screwing someone innocent. The bad guys just double their output.
Yes, spammers are evil scum who need a standard NATO round square in the forehead. But this sort of rough and ready justice worries me. An attack on the network is an attack on the network, period. If this sort of thing becomes respectable where does it end?
If it is OK to DDoS spamers, who else is it ok to knock off of the net?
Kiddie Porn?
Regular Porn?
Nazi/Skinhead sites?
Anything YOU think is a 'hate site'?
Anything ANYONE things is a 'hate site'?
Anything anyone objects to for any reason?
Business competitors?
Political opponents?
Anyone applauding Lycos for this had better be ready to draw the line somewhere on that list above and defend why their line is the absolute correct one in language all can agree on or that line will creep down at Internet speed.
Democrat delenda est
Does it matter? Mission (screw the spammers) accomplished either way.
Vigilantism (sp? Is that even a word?) is legally risky at best. I would love to see lawmakers specifically exempt Lycos in the specific anti-spam effort. I'd also like to see lawmakers pass laws that increase spam penalties to death by slow and painful torture. Maybe that's just me.
But there's a big problem with the concept of legalizing even such specific vigilante acts. Where does the line in the sand get drawn? My USA Lawmakers seem ignorant (at best) when it comes to technology issues. Furthermore, making an exception for spam only would likely open the door to tremendous abuse. Would GWB authorize DDOS against non-Republican affiliated endeavors?
It's a slippery slope. As much as I like the concept, my doubts are not being assuaged.
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
... as least until one of your arsonists accidentally burns down the murderer's neighbor's house.
paintball
They released the screensaver with a fixed list of sites? I thought it would look through your Spam folder in your mail client and visit each web site mentioned there; a much fairer way to do things and perhaps legally safer too.
I know someone has previously suggested making mail clients download every link in a message; the idea is that if everyone did this then spammers would even have an incentive to get 'unsubscribe' working. Yes, it does confirm that your address is live; so what, it was on the spam list anyway.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
DDoS is not defined by the willingness of the parties involved. DDoS is a distributed denial of service attack. Denial of service means that ones service is being denied by another party. Distributed means it comes from multiple sources... just because people are willing to let it happen has NOTHING to do with it.
If me and 100 people on an IRC channel willingly installed something similar and used it to attack government websites or servers would they call it civil disobedience? I think not.
Get it right peewee.
It depends how the redirect is implemented, a META refresh would probably not work, but a HTTP "Location:" header might.
Exactly. If the mortgage guys don't like the packets coming from our screensavers, why haven't they sent us any opt-out requests?
We could be seeing a dotslashing (a reverse Slashdot) where this site is bombarded by visitors because of all the links to it.
The really terrifying part is that non-geeks will get to see how geeks communicate...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
To me, it seems their marketing campaign has gone the wrong way.
o fsense.com/signup.html)
I don't see any problem with email offers as such as long as they are above board so to speak, for instance because I have signed up for a company, or expressed an interest in a product.
Up until recently they had an email signup form on the web, and its not difficult to signup anyone you want, the site is quirky enough to raise a laugh amongst friends (I went through a phase of signing up folks to knitting pattern newsletters!).
(Archive link: http://web.archive.org/web/20040202064714/www.art
On the signup page, they do state that they never sell emails or pass to others, which considering the whole look and feel of the site (small family art business) seems like a reasonable line.
Now, if one of those friends was on Lycos and marked it as spam its quite feasible that the Lycos engine has taken it onboard as spam.
This could mean Lycos makes no distinction between a reasonable prospective mailing from a small reputable company and the hardened multimillion hidden linkage spyware infested crap.
But then again, I'm possibly very wide of the mark.
liqbase
*blink* oh, yeah, really clever law.
RIAA hacks into someone's computer.
Person has no legal recourse against RIAA
Person hacks back and knocks the RIAA off the internet / nukes their network / whatever
The point is that when there's no peaceful resolution (i.e. a court settlement), then everything descends into a non-peaceful solution, i.e. a free for all. And, simply, the RIAA wouldn't have much of a case in the courts against someone for the counter-hack - IANAL but if the person hacked CANNOT defend themselves against it in the courts (particularly if nothing infringing was found) then to hack back to prevent yourself from being attacked is self defence, defence of property not person, but nontheless self defence.
The other possibility is that with all the hacking and counter hacking going on, firewall and other defensive technology should improve no end, which is good. Eventually the computers will all be locked up so tight that it ends in a stalemate, with a situation identical to that today, except that it'll be because no-one can get into the other's computers, rather than because it's illegal.
Quite simply, if the law refuses to protect something or someone then the law can't complain when someone or something protects itself. That's got to be written down somewhere.
Although I'm probably entirely wrong because IANAL at all, in any way, shape, or form.
As long as they can do it to /. as well.
Why not get every person and every site on the net to DDos the entire farking thing off the planet? Doesn't that sound like fun?
Think about it, there is not one thing on the net that probably isn't an annoyance to at least one person out there.
If DDOSing a site you don't like becomes generally acceptable behavior, the net is in some serious trouble.
It's entire foundation of the internet being based on believing that people will generally "play nice" (as it is) is on the verge of causing it's destruction here.
Lets keep cool heads. Boycott and stop supporting the use of the lycos screen saver and get back to work on a better email protocol!
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Welcome to the Internet. :-)
No, seriously, the 'net was founded on principles of consensual anarchy. That's the way it has always been, and the way it always should remain. By signing onto the Internet, the spamming companies agreed to join a transnational network that was effectively above the laws of any one nation. If someone wants a protected little world, they should wall themselves off from the 'net behind eight firewalls and never communicate with the rest of the universe. If a whiny, crybaby spam business wants to fight against it, let them try. Next time, the 'net's tendency towards autocorrection will ensure that they get BGP blackholed for all eternity.
The right solution for solving spam is not one of government. We don't need laws to make DOS attacks on spammers legal because they were never illegal to begin with. They agreed implicitly to accept whatever the Internet threw at them when they signed on. This is the way the Internet has always worked---when polite discourse fails to correct the error of one's ways, the 'net's response is to isolate the problem in the harshest possible manner to serve as an example to others who might choose to also act in ways that are harmful to the best interests of the 'net.
There's simply no other mechanism for solving this sort of problem other than everyone giving up on unsigned SMTP, and since too many people aren't willing to do that, the only alternative is to simply packet-spam the spammers into oblivion. I say, let their routers burn.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Wilfull ignorance is no defense.
Bullshit. They paid someone to spam people, and now they're trying to say it's not their fault. They should have done their due diligence and asked just how this spammer proposed to market their paintings.How does taking down a spammer's Web site stem the flow of spam? The two aren't related, and in fact all that's happening is that a hosting company somewhere is getting blasted (not that that bothers me ... host a spammer's Web site and you can just take your lumps.) However, actual spam is sent using open relays and other bits of misdirection and likely isn't even on the same pipe as the Web site. Sure, this sends the spammers the message that we don't like what they're doing ... but one has to assume that they already know that. I guess I don't see what practical purpose this is serving.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Dude, that is like, what, +500 insightful? I wish I could un-post so that I could mod you up.
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
Big problem here. The most powerful win, at everyone else's expense. It seems fine when applied to spammers, but if somebody powerful decides they don't like you anymore, you're off the net, or worse. There has to be some kind of legal protection, as the ubiquitous network becomes a necessity of living, both for the powerful and for the average-joe.
There's no time to stop for gas, we're already late.