[aldo_14]

Good or bad?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4061375.stm
A plan to bump up the bandwidth bills of spammers seems to be getting out of control.

Earlier this week Lycos Europe released a screensaver that bombards spam websites with data to try to increase the cost of running such sites.

But analysis shows that, in some cases, spam websites are being completely overwhelmed by the traffic being directed their way.

The Lycos plan has also come under fire for encouraging vigilantism.

Personally I'm torn between the possibly dangerous precedent of legitimisng what can be denoted as a DDOS attack, and the fact that spammers will be getting their business ****ed up.

EDIt; No I'm not, actually.  I was just trying to figure out exactly what the 'against' arguement was, first.

[Fineus]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but some might say that with all the spam clogging up the net, that could be considered a form of DOS?

[Tiara]

"encouraging vigilantism"

Yeah, when they do **** all about spammers, vigilantism is the way to go.

I just can't believe it when spam sites are being hacked, the media, law makers and **** all band together for the spammers

Unsollicited advertisement, toolbars and spyware that makes my browser **** up is worse then what lycos did.

[pyro-manic]

**** the spammers. String them up by the bollocks, I say. Bloody good work, Lycos. The government should do this....

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
Correct me if I'm wrong, but some might say that with all the spam clogging up the net, that could be considered a form of DOS?

Yup.  My only real worry is what happens if, for example, someone is able to hack the Lycos server that determines the spammers IP addresses.  

I actually like another website - I forget the address - that targets the bandwidth of 'front' websites for 419 scams by loading all their images in frames and reloading said images every second or so.

The only quibble i have with this, is not what it does, but what it could potentially be used for.  Plus, I'd prefer it if they used the details of spammers & their employers to sign them up for mailshot spam.. hehe.

(that was done to a 'spam king' in Florida; IIRC he receives about a dumptrucks worth of junk mail each week)

[Vertigo1]

My only beef is that in the process, you could very well likely clog up the pipe hosting a legitimate site as well.

[MatthewPapa]

Thants a pretty damn good idea. Better than anything someone has thought of so far.

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by aldo_14
I actually like another website - I forget the address - that targets the bandwidth of 'front' websites for 419 scams by loading all their images in frames and reloading said images every second or so.

Wouldn't this tactic be rendered useless by caching servers/switches?

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by ZylonBane

Wouldn't this tactic be rendered useless by caching servers/switches?

I think they ask people to disable image caching on the site.

[aldo_14]

Apparently, the Lycos website has had to be taken offline because the spammer sites are redirecting traffic back to it.......

[Vertigo1]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Apparently, the Lycos website has had to be taken offline because the spammer sites are redirecting traffic back to it.......

They probably changed IP addresses as well.  Serves the morons right for releasing something like this.  I hate spammers too, but stuff like this isn't the answer.  Now if they issued a death penalty, or bankrupted them, I'd be all for it since it only hurts the spammers instead of legitmate sites.

[Lynx]

Nuke 'em from orbit it's the only way to be sure.

[karajorma]

The best solution for spammers is what happened once when a spammers real home address got out onto the web. Everyone signed him up for every piece of junk snail mail they could. Apparently the guy started recieving kilograms of junk mail at his home address (and that's a lot harder to change)

So basically that's what you do to spammers. Sign them up to every piece of crap you can. They can't even complain cause the only defence they have for their entire existance is that people might want to buy something from the crap that they sell.