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December 2, 2004

Chongq and the Spam Vampires

The controversial Lycos anti-spam screensaver has been mysteriously out of service since Thursday morning. No word from the company about when, if ever, the Make Love Not Spam campaign will return.

If it does make a comeback, I hope Lycos corrects the problems with the renegade program. For one thing, some of the alleged spam sites targeted by the service aren't even listed on any spam blacklists.

In the meantime, Internet users with a strong desire to retaliate against spammers have other alternatives, as I describe in a new article at the O'Reilly Network entitled Chongq and the Spam Vampires.

For those not bothered by the ethics of fighting abuse with abuse, there are browser-based tools that suck up spammer bandwidth even faster than the Lycos screensaver.

And, as I detail in the story, there's also a new system for fighting back against blog and wiki spam -- and all the while staying on the high moral road!

Posted by brian at December 2, 2004 6:09 PM