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| Lycos appears to have removed the screensaver
from their website, at least temporarily. |
In the last week, Lycos Europe made available for download a
screensaver named "Make Love Not Spam" which controversially
attempted to hit back at websites owned by spammers by generating
internet traffic. The idea, according to Lycos, was to increase the
running costs of spam websites and hopefully drive them out of
business.
However, the website which had hosted the screensaver now
displays a large pink graphic telling surfers to "Stay tuned", and
it appears that the screensaver has been withdrawn - at least
temporarily.
Lycos Europe's campaign against spammers courted controversy as
some, including Sophos, questioned the legality of attacking
spammers' websites in this way.
"Attacking a spammer's website is like poking a grizzly bear
sleeping in your back garden with a pointy stick," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "Not only is this screensaver
similar in its approach to a potentially illegal distributed denial
of service attack, but it also is in danger of turning innocent
computer users into vigilantes, who may not be prepared for
whatever retaliation the spammers care to dream up."
It is not known whether Lycos has now decided to respond to
criticism from the security community, or plans to reissue the
screensaver in the future. Regardless, Sophos recommends computer
users do not use the screensaver.
"Our advice to computer users would be to not provoke spammers
in this way. Everyone hates spammers, but that doesn't mean it's
right to lower yourself to their level and generate more
unnecessary internet traffic," continued Cluley. "If you're fed up
with spam, install a decent anti-spam product and make sure you
never ever purchase a product marketed via junk email."
Sophos recommends companies protect themselves with a consolidated solution which can defend them from
the threats of both spam and viruses.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.