MakeLOVEnotSPAM is history
Tuesday December 7, 2004
Beleaguered search engine giant Lycos Europe has pulled the plug on its MakeLOVEnotSPAM screensaver. Though an estimated 100,000 downloaded the screensaver, harsh criticism presumably caused the campaign to be temporarily suspended just a few days after its inception. A note on the website read simply, “Stay Tuned”.
MakeLOVEnotSPAM no more
On Monday, the Stay Tuned message was removed and Lycos released a statement, “With this campaign we intended to raise a new impulse in the anti-spam discussion and therefore create awareness for the big economic and societal problems caused by spam. The campaign has reached its goal and thus will be stopped."
The MakeLOVEnotSPAM screensaver was designed to slow traffic response from spammers' websites. According to Lycos, the websites were not subjected to a Denial of Service attack, which would have resulted in their inability to handle any traffic for the duration of the DoS. However, the England-based Netcraft, an Internet services and security company, claimed that some websites were crippled by the MakeLOVEnotSPAM campaign. Lycos denies the allegation, claiming the listed sites were not targeted by the screensaver at the time the outtages occurred.
The MakeLOVEnotSPAM screensaver campaign worked by using idle time of participating computers to send a steady stream of GET requests to a list of spammer sites. Many questioning the legality of the campaign, raising ethical arguments criticizing the 'tit-for-tat' approach. Whether the campaign was stopped due to these legal issues, or whether rumors of a counterattack against Lycos were true, or whether Lycos simply achieved whatever goal they hoped to meet, the short-lived MakeLOVEnotSPAM has made its exit.
MakeLOVEnotSPAM no more
On Monday, the Stay Tuned message was removed and Lycos released a statement, “With this campaign we intended to raise a new impulse in the anti-spam discussion and therefore create awareness for the big economic and societal problems caused by spam. The campaign has reached its goal and thus will be stopped."
The MakeLOVEnotSPAM screensaver was designed to slow traffic response from spammers' websites. According to Lycos, the websites were not subjected to a Denial of Service attack, which would have resulted in their inability to handle any traffic for the duration of the DoS. However, the England-based Netcraft, an Internet services and security company, claimed that some websites were crippled by the MakeLOVEnotSPAM campaign. Lycos denies the allegation, claiming the listed sites were not targeted by the screensaver at the time the outtages occurred.
The MakeLOVEnotSPAM screensaver campaign worked by using idle time of participating computers to send a steady stream of GET requests to a list of spammer sites. Many questioning the legality of the campaign, raising ethical arguments criticizing the 'tit-for-tat' approach. Whether the campaign was stopped due to these legal issues, or whether rumors of a counterattack against Lycos were true, or whether Lycos simply achieved whatever goal they hoped to meet, the short-lived MakeLOVEnotSPAM has made its exit.
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