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by Mike Masnick

Thu, Dec 2nd 2004 2:03pm





Lycos Europe Knocks Two Servers Offline, Despite Promises

from the whoops dept

Earlier this week, when news started to spread that Lycos Europe was telling people to download screensavers that would constantly hit sites accused of being spam servers with data, the company (and some in our own comments) defended the practice, claiming that it wasn't a distributed denial of service attack, because service would be allowed... just much more slowly. They claimed they would monitor the situation to make sure no sites were taken offline. Apparently, that monitoring hasn't worked so well, because two sites have already been taken offline by the program. While I have no problem with spam sites being shut down for violating laws or terms of service, this is not the method to use for that. There's no recourse, and Lycos is acting as judge, jury and executioner -- without any real proof of who's guilty. There are simply too many sites that have been falsely accused of spamming, as well as too many innocent bystanders who share a server with a spammer without realizing it, to expect that this project won't adversely impact many innocent site owners.

6 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  1.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Dec 2nd, 2004 @ 2:26pm

    Stopping Spam


    Perhaps the solution to spam is to place a copy of the spam in a folder on a public site
    so that other email engines and gateways can test the incoming email against the A. They could use this to stop the flow. This protects the Web from the traffic loading.
    B. People could then look at the span and actively boycott the products.
    This would have the effect of making hiring a spammer a loss making proposition
    - to provide behaviour modification of the seller!

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Dec 2nd, 2004 @ 2:29pm

    Not Lycos

    Just to be clear, this is Lycos Europe, which is not part of the Lycos that most internet users are familiar with.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    icon
    Mike (profile), Dec 2nd, 2004 @ 3:12pm

    Re: Not Lycos

    I thought the post made it clear that it's Lycos Europe. That's how it's referred to in the title and in the post, but you're right to point out these are different companies. Thanks.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    W.B. McNamara, Dec 2nd, 2004 @ 3:47pm

    Zombie army or angry mob of villagers?

    I was impressed to see that this story already holds five of the top ten Google results for a search on the phrase "zombie army," but I still prefer my "angry mob" image to the "zombie army" that everyone one else seems to have agreed on.

    From my post this morning:
    It's not just that fact that Lycos is merrily handing bricks, torches, and bottled water to the angry mob that disturbs me, it's that they seem to genuinely believe that only the houses of the wicked will get burned to the ground.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  
    identicon
    Slappy McPhee, Dec 3rd, 2004 @ 9:57am

    Re: Stopping Spam

    > Perhaps the solution to spam is to place a copy of the spam in a folder on a public site< br>so that other email engines and gateways can test the incoming email against the A.

    Among others: http://www.spamcop.net

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jan 18th, 2006 @ 5:02pm

    Re: Stopping Spam

    Sounds great! You host it.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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