|
|
 |
|
|
Pages: 1
Lycos To Release Spam Fighting Screensaver
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)
Posted by: Ion Silverbolt
Lycos has a screensaver available that goes on the offensive against spammers.
Internet portal Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail. Lycos hopes it will make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers soar by keeping their servers running flat out. The net firm estimates that if enough people sign up and download the tool, spammers could end up paying to send out terabytes of data.
Posted by: Zendu
Not a bad thought, but whats to stop them from banning your ip?
Posted by: TheHairyOne
Interesting concept...
Why wouldn't they ban your IP? Its the shotgun approach. They have to ban all IPs on the subnet of your provider that you are on (since most ISPs don't offer static address and actually change your active address on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis). This has a couple of side effects. The first is that all those adverts are designed to draw in business. If they are blocking your IP, they can't get your business. If they block enough IPs, they aren't going to generate any business.
My question would be how does Lycos identify the spam sites? What happens if someone hacks a legit site and sends out a bunch of spam mail? Does Lycos then tag and bury that server with traffic, thus compounding the issue for the victim site?
While I question whether it can actually work, the thought IS rather appealing...
Posted by: Ion Silverbolt
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=...250244&from=rss
Can't say i'm surprised. It was a bad idea from the get go.
|
|
|
|
|
