Slashdot Mirror
Lycos Pulls Vigilante Anti-spam Campaign
davidwr writes "Eweek reports that Lycos is scrapping it's anti-spam campaign: 'On Friday, Lycos Europe gave up the ghost, posting a 'Stay Tuned' note on the MakeLoveNotSpam.com Web site it was using to distribute the screensaver. The Lycos Europe home page, which heavily promoted the screensaver all week, was also scrubbed clean of any references to the screensaver.' See previous Slashdot coverage from Nov. 26, Dec. 1, and Dec. 2."
Really it's not that complex of a product to make and given that it seems to have been somewhat successful at accomplishing it's goal (or in fact too successful by actually DOSing the spammers) I don't see it as that unlikely that someone will go and create a new screensaver that is even more destructive.
Clearly there is at least some interest in fighting spam with DDOS even though it's not the best solution.
What about existing users of the screensaver? Will it continue to work (i.e., flood spam sites)?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Why not build this feature into an email client (e.g. Thunderbird). When you get a spam, you put it in a special folder and the client repeatedly accesses the site (a la the Lycos screensaver). That way nobody can be cited for orchestrating a DDoS or unfairly blacklisting. Each recipient can make their own spammer determination.
Whether the client uses the exact URL in the email (which often has identification codes for the recipient of the spam or the affiliate who sent it) is a matter of debate. On the one hand, I don't want to identify myself to any spammer or show that my email is live.
On the other hand, I would want the spam site to know that using my email address will only bring it grief. As a side bonus, it might even bankrupt the site when it has to pay its spammer affiliates for all the automated clickthroughs. If a greater percentage of people clickthrough via automated means (but don't buy), it harms both the spam-marketed site (in bandwidth and affiliate charges) and it hurts the spammer when sites reduce their clickthough payment rates. I can only hope that this will cause spammer-using sites to crack down on spammers that are too aggressive.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Next, the spammers will start converting all the zombie PCs they now use for distributed email attacks into web servers that provide their advertisers a distributed source of order-taking. This means that unsuspecting PC owners everywhere will soon rack up astounding bandwidth overruns as URLs that point to their PC get entered into the SBS program.
Nevertheless, an SBS does strike directly at the spammers, raising the hoop a bit higher and perhaps winnowing out the less 'professional' among them.
The only sure cure for spam, of course, is to take the battle one step further, by consuming all the resources of the advertisers directly - call their phones, request literature, place fraudlent orders with non-existant CC numbers (that, of course, pass Luhn MOD 10 checking) and provide contact phone numbers that ring forever. This will swamp them with orders that tie up their sales staff, cost them money and ultimately starve them.
The only problem with "the final solution" for spam is that it takes individual effort on a daily concerted basis. So spam endures by riding on the backs of those so clueless that they actually order products from spammers and those of us too lazy to do anything about it.
Ain't humanity grand?
Call it what you want but it probably was working. I recorded a drop in spam that started last thursday and was proportional to the number of screen savers in operation. By the time it hit 104,000 savers in operation daily spam was down over 80%. I actually had three solid hours with no spam (that hasn't happened since 9/11). Historically spam rises during this time frame.
It's odd that attacking websites seemed to have dropped the amount of spam. Makes me wonder just how close the spam servers are to the spam website servers. Maybe the innocent victems we are so worried about are really the spammers.
Come on all you people - this was a probe - yack about good or evil and POST YOUR RESULTS!
What did this really do. I can't be the only one who tracks spam. Admins, what do you say?
For the first time, the angry mob (people around the world with email accounts) have tasted blood and they want more. "The beast is wounded, quick, go for the eyes!"
It hardly seems important whether the notion of DOS-styled retribution is appropriate or even legal - no such moral or legal considerations have managed to control people's decision to download mp3's and movies for free.
This is history in the making, and as I see it, the real story is this; we have been victims with no means of defending ourselves, while our frustration and anger grow without end. Suddenly a revolutionary appears on the scene and give us hope, showing us how we can fight back.
It's no longer an issue of whether or not we will, or should fight back - the mob has tasted blood and will have more. As far as I'm concerned, it falls to forums like this one to "think-tank" relatively responsible solutions, and I've heard some good ideas here in the last week.
We all know someone is sitting in their basement right now, pulling an all-nighter, writing the next tool of mass-retribution, fueled by strong coffee and an even stronger hatred of spam. I suggest that if cooler heads are to prevail in any manner, it will be by creating a less-malicious tool of retribution, one which attempts to focus the attacks on legitimate "military targets" by requiring manual human selection of the targets, not by letting some distributed software select the targets automatically. Better hurry, the latter approach is probably more tempting to programmers who have succumbed to the blood-lust...