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Anti-Spam screensaver announced... then scrapped

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Corrosive:

--- Quote ---A contentious campaign to bump up the bandwidth bills of spammers by flooding their sites with data has been dropped.

Lycos Europe's Make Love, Not Spam campaign began in late November but its tactics proved controversial.

Lycos has shut down the campaign saying it had been started to stimulate debate about anti-spam measures and had now achieved this aim.

The anti-spammer screensaver came under fire for encouraging vigilante activity and skirting the edge of the law.
--- End quote ---


Source: BBC News - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4073547.stm

It appears the system went a bit overboard with the amount of data it was sending out and the whole thing went belly up. But I think the best bit is the timing of it all:

"Screensaver tackles spam websites" - 29 Nov 04
"Anti-spam plan overwhelms sites" - 02 Dec 04
"Freeze on anti-spam campaign" - 03 Dec 04
Anti-spam screensaver scrapped - 06 Dec 04

From release to death in a single week.

Neil:
I've had yogurts stay fresh longer than that.

Raptor:
Yoghurt stays proper for quite a while.

I wonder if that's ethical.. Spamming spammers?

Neil:
Don't spam, lest ye be spammed.

2k dummy:
There is virus circulating that arrives in an email and claims to install this screen saver. It installs a key logger and sends the results to a site in Indonesia. Hope nobody falls for it, especially since Lycos has pulled the plug on it.

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