all-encompassingly

hate spam? lycos is giving it’s european users the option of fighting back against spammers in an interesting way:

Internet portal Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail. Lycos hopes it will make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers soar by keeping their servers running flat out. The net firm estimates that if enough people sign up and download the tool, spammers could end up paying to send out terabytes of data. [source]

despite lycos’ focus on its european customers, north americans can participate, too. it is the world wide web, after all. here’s how:

1. go here and select a country (the UK might be best, if you’re interested in combating english-language spam).

2. download the screensaver (please. for the love of all that is holy, download the screensaver). file size is less than 2MB.

3. while you’re at it, enter the URL of some spam websites. this is a feature we will be using here at all-encompassingly from this day forward. every spam (comment or email) that comes in will have its URL submitted to lycos for inclusion in the anti-spam program. it’s payback time.

i hope everyone with a computer and a modem will participate. read the full article from the BBC. via kottke.org

UPDATE: the “make love not spam” server appears to be down right now. the conspiratorialist in me says that the spammers are on the counter attack. but (perhaps more likely) it is the overwhelming response from lycos users that is to blame.

UPDATE: both wrong. it was the lawyers, of course.