Lycos removes controversial screensaver
6 December 2004
After the storm caused by its new "Make love not spam" campaign, Lycos Europe has removed its free screensaver application from the internet.
The company claims the screensaver, which uses idle computers to bombard spam websites with data and slow down their bandwidth, has just been too popular.
Lycos Europe insists that the screensaver will be back and visitors to the firm's site are urged to "stay tuned". The internet company claims over 100,000 users have downloaded the screensaver.
Experts have accused Lycos Europe of acting irresponsibly by launching the "Make love not spam" campaign.
"You can't break into a thief's house just because he breaks into yours. We don't support this or recommend this practice. Directing traffic is part of the degradation of the Internet we are trying to stop," said Steve Linford, director of Spamhaus, a non-profit anti-spam organisation.
Monitoring firm Netcraft found that a number of websites targeted by Lycos were completely knocked offline, though Lycos Europe insists it is not carrying out denial of services attacks.
Lycos Europe is a separate company from the web portal that bears the Lycos name in the United States.
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