Lycos attacks spam with screensaver
30 November 2004
Internet portal Lycos has designed a new type of screensaver that fights spam.
The screensaver constantly requests data from sites that sell items featured in spam emails and Lycos hopes that, if enough spam victims download it, the screensaver will make the spammers monthly bandwidth bill sky rocket by keeping their servers running flat out.
"We've never really solved the big problem of spam which is that it's so damn cheap and easy to do," said Malte Pollmann, spokesman for Lycos Europe. "We've found a way to make it much higher cost for spammers by putting a load on their servers."
Lycos estimates that if enough people sign up and download the new tool, spammers could end up paying for terabytes of data being sent out.
Mr Pollmann said there was no intention to stop the spam websites working and added that the screensaver had been carefully written to ensure that the amount of traffic it generated from each user did not overload the web.
The list of sites that the screensaver will target is taken from real-time blacklists generated by organisations such as Spamcop and Lycos is using people to ensure that the sites are selling spam goods.
The screensaver, which has been trialled in Sweden, is due to be launched across Europe on December 1st.
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