Anti-Spam screensaver is scrapped

The screensaver from Lycos which was designed to flood the bandwidth of spammers and force them to go offline due to high bandwidth bills (Story here!)has been scrapped today.

Lycos said their aim of stimulating discussion about anti-spam measures had now been achieved. Lycos came under serious fire for encouraging vigilante activity and skirting very close to the law!!

Over 100,000 users downloaded the “Make Love, Not Spam” screensaver. Some net service providers even began blocking access to the Lycos Europe site in protest of the Lycos screensaver.

The company denied it was their fault that some of the sites monitored by NetCraft had been knocked completely offline:

There is nothing to suggest that Make Love, Not Spam has brought down any of the sites that it has targeted.

At the time that Netcraft measured the sites it claims may have been brought down, they were not in fact part of the Make Love, Not Spam attack cycle.

The statement issued by Lycos also said that the centralised database it used ensured that traffic to the target sites left them with 5% spare capacity.