Lycos runs up white flag in DoS war on spammers

By Steve Malone

Posted on 6 Dec 2004 at 09:36

After a week of trading packet requests across the internet with spammers, Lycos Europe has pulled down its www.makelovenotspam.com service. The site now features a single page with the logo.

The site offered a screen saver download to customers which would then fire packets to known spammers' websites. The scheme proved very popular. Too popular as many of its targets were not merely slowed down but actually brought to a halt - in contravention of various national laws which outlaw denial of service attacks.

Not that the spammers felt the need to go to law. Instead they appear to have launched a reprisal DoS attack of their own forcing Lycos Europe to switch the IP address of the service towards the end of last week. Lycos Europe has now decided to run up the white flag.

Nevertheless, Lycos Europe says that during the week the service was available www.makelovenotspam.com generated over 100,000 downloads. If nothing else it shows there is a large degree of support in the online community for striking back at the spammers, even though, in this case, the spammers appear to have had the greater firepower and probably the law on their side