I think this is the best idea since sliced bread! It's getting installed on every single machine as we speak.
Dave -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Len Conrad Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004 3:34 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] Lycos screensaver tackles spam websites >That is a terrible thing -- imagine how many lawsuits there will be. I'm sure Lycos has looked into that, but we'll see. It would beyond ironic if spammers/spamvertizers can hide from the law as the DDoS our MXs, but the spammers' websites were "protected" by the law. >The biggest problem is that many spammers don't pay for bandwidth, they >steal it. So you're just hurting a company that is already being hurt >by spammers. This is an attack on spamvertizing websites, not on spamming IPs like compromised PC. How many spammers steal entire websites, and with e-commerce support? If a machine has been compromised to become a spamvertizer website, the Lycos DDoS will very quickly inform the machine operator with an "message" that can't be ignored. >Another problem is that it hurts the Internet -- by using up bandwidth >that otherwise could go to good purposes. Spam already has been doing that by TB/day for years. The Lycos kind of DDoS would be a tiny fraction of the TB already lost to spam, with the benefit of making the cost of running a spamvertizing website very painful, expesnive, even useless, so that the the websites stop spamvertizing, thereby reducing the TB lost to spam. >When you send a packet to a computer, it doesn't just affect their >bandwidth > -- it affects yours, your neighbor's, and that of many other people. It's a DDoS, with Lycos limiting the MB/day per attacker. Who's gonna complain about a couple MB/day that could in turn reduces their 100's of MB of incoming spam to the same network? Esp when many anti-spam solutions have to accept all spam in 100% entirety in order to reject it, often DoSing the machine running the anti-spam "solution"? Subscriber networks already spew TB/day of spam, viruses, spyware that eats up the bandwidth of the sourcing subscriber networks, but not so much that the subscriber network operators are forced to stop the spew. >Yet another problem is that spammers can now do much more damage to a >website they are trying to DDoS. They can just send out spam with the >URL of the website in it. Whoever runs the database server of websites to be DDoSed will need to qualify the targets, obviously, just like there are RBLs that qualify what they list. Len _____________________________________________________________________ http://IMGate.MEIway.com : free anti-spam gateway, runs on 1000's of sites To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
