That Lycos Screensaver

Does it still work? Did anyone use it? Anyone think it was justified?

 

Doesn't work now, they pulled the plug on it. I used it, when it did
work, and yes, I thought it was justified.

 

It was not justified. Spamvertised websites are not generally hosted on
their own networks or servers. The DDoSes that were spawned by Lycos are
just the sort of service-sapping action that would really piss you off if
your site was hosted on the same affected network and you had considerable
downtime.

 

Muck
(muck@dsl_TEETH_.pipex.com) says...

It's been withdrawn
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4073547.stm

Had it kept going, I think I would have used it.



--
<8P Wizard
Suzuki GS550 "I like that. Nicely shite" - TOG
Golf GTi 16v
ANORAK#17b BOMB#19 BOTAFOT#138 BREast#5 COFF#24
COSOC#8 DFV#11 STG#1
Remove location from email address to reply

 

Ah- I didn't realise that.

Mined Ewe, if they're hosted on that basis, I see the point
about increased bandwidth bills hurting them.

And if I had a site that was 'colaterally damaged', I'd be on at
the hosting service to chuck out the spammers.

--
<8P Wizard
Suzuki GS550 "I like that. Nicely shite" - TOG
Golf GTi 16v
ANORAK#17b BOMB#19 BOTAFOT#138 BREast#5 COFF#24
COSOC#8 DFV#11 STG#1
Remove location from email address to reply

 

Jonathan wrote

seems plausible.

I can hardly wait. 'angin' is too good for spamming cunts.

 

Yeh, something else will come along, official or otherwise.

 

I found it quite ironic that a free email address provider chose to do
it. Guilt maybe? If free email addresses were banned, & instead you had
to pay a deposit, which you lose if your account's cancelled for
spamming or scamming, it would virtually wipe out spammers & scammers
overnight (until they found another way to do it).

 

Why do you think that? when I could be bothered to pursue spammers in
the vast majority of cases the e-mail address claimed was a fake.

 

It wouldn't stop people who run their own SMTP server granted, but
they're easily blocked with things like Spamcop. However there's still
a huge amount of spam from genuine free addresses, particularly to
things like Yahoo Groups where you have to use a valid address to join.

Scammers would be stopped dead as they have to give a valid email
address.

 

Hmm. Didn't I have a script somewhere ..?

Ah yes, here it is ...

#!/bin/sh
addr=[put their address here]
REPLYTO=[and here] ; export REPLYTO
file="/home/toto/spam"
i=0; n=1000
while [ $i -lt $n ]
do
/usr/bin/nice -20 mailx -s fuckoffspammers $addr < "$file"
/bin/sleep 10
i=`expr $i + 1`
done

HTH.

 

I'll take you word for it, any spam that doesn't get auto deleted is
now very rare and I had to search in the deleted items to find one. It
wasn't an obvious free address either. IMO sending bulk mail from
something like hotmail would be a lot more work than is worthwhile.

I can see yahoo groups would be a useful harvesting ground for valid
addresses since everyone's address is valid. The most common thing
recently has been viri sent to the despammed address - like I'd open
an attachment to this address.

 

Boots Blakeley wrote

I dunno the exact figures but somewhere around three quarters of all the
spam and thieving scum mail I get is for addies that have never existed.
A lot of them seem to spring from one of them virus outbreaks a couple
of years ago when stuff was just pumped out with made up addies in the
form . It lingers on still, clogging the system
and pissing me off.

 

A little more simplistic than what I was thinking of.

 

That's what I assume these are, however, I suspect that often it's
some dickless wonder trying to start/restart ones of these mass
mailers. All wasted on me, I wouldn't open the attachment, I don't use
a Microsoft mailer at home and even if I know the sender I still scan
attachments with AVG. In the case of addresses used on usenet,
webshites, yahoo groups etc having an attachment is a good way to be
auto deleted.

 

steve auvache says...

Our domain name got used as a from: address to some spam and what pissed
me off was the number of numpties who generated auto replys not only to
the original address[1] but also to abuse and postmaster. It wasn't us
FFS...

[1] Which was invalid.