I figure, between my work email and two private email accounts it takes me about 2 minutes a day to filter through and delete all the spam messages. Multiply that by all the users on the net and all the resultant lost productivity and I’d have no beef if this technology hurts the spammers an equivalent amount, whether in time or lost revenue. Eye for an eye.
yes, they waste our time, bandwidth, e-mail storage space peddling crap we don’t want, and we’re unable to make these morons know that we want them to STOP, so, we waste their bandwidth and they start wimpering that it’s “unfair”, uhh, hello pot, meet kettle…
then again i wouldn’t be opposed to using nuclear weapons against spammers, so i might be a little biased…
as far as i’m concerned, the spammer’s right to peddle their crap ends before it even reaches my e-mail account, in my opinion spammers have no rights, they’re the scum of the earth, right up there with politicians, telemarketers and insurance adjusters, they gave up their rights against retaliatory pings when they decided to spam
Nuke 'em from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
The main concern with this and other “vigilante” style approaches is that legitimate sites might get accidentally overwhelmed. As long as Lycos provides mechanisms that allows a legitimate site to get off the list (in a swift manner), nuke away. These assholes are indeed the scum of the earth. Hitting them in the pocketbook is entirely appropriate.
In an attempt to guide this thread in a somewhat more constructive direction, I wish to make clear that I, like the rest of you, hate spam and the persons responsible for it.
The question I meant to ask relates specifically to the technology used - while Lycos probably didn’t intend this software to render full fledged DDOS attacks against the servers in question, they obviously did intend to consume network bandwidth, and incur costs to the spammers in appropriate retribution for the costs that spam makes us bear.
Did Lycos act irresponsibly in distributing this software? As much as I hate spammers with a vengeance, I have to agree with the sentiment that internet vigilantism is not necessarily a good idea. I think it is a GREAT idea if it could be limited to spammers and virus authors, but then you open the doors to similar tactics being used against anyone acting against some arbitrary ethics. IMO, a case of the law not keeping up with the technology.
I agree that like the death penalty HIJACK!!!, while certainly appropriate for those who actually commited the actions, its potential for misuse seems to be too great to justify its benefits.
This is the first time ever that we’ve heard anything from the spammers. Why don’t they have E-Mail addresses so we can send them hundreds of E-Mails per day? Or even better, it would be nice to return their spam about penis enlargement medications and barely legal teens just 1 day past their 18th birthday and all set for hot, wild girl on girl action?
What surprises me is how Lycos found any web addresses, domain names, etc whereby something could actually be sent to a spammer.
Wow, these jerks have the law on their side too. A DOS attack on spammers? Wow didn’t they get outraged !! As I’ve said in previous postings, this is like a group of victimized students banding together to kick the shit out of the school bully and then he goes running to the principal to complain.
One solution might be to have a national or even world-wide Do-Not-Spam list similar to the “Do Not Call List”.
point is the principal should be administering the punishment in the first place, not the students. while it is difficult to blame the students when the principal has been proved to be effectively useless against school bullies, it is still vigilantism.
what for? nobody in their right mind will be interested. make it an opt-in “Do Call List” instead.
if Lycos’ List is fair and legitimate, then it is the authorities’ job to come down hard on the spammers, not us.
Not ethical in the slightest.
I agree that the spammers deserve to be punished, but the basic rule of ethics is this (maybe you’ve heard of it):
“Do under others as you would have them do unto you.”
(There are also some variations.)
Unless you’d like to have a DDoS attack aimed at you, it’s unethical to do it to others, no matter how satisfying the idea might be.
Sounds like…justice.
okay, for those of you that are saying “no, it’s unethical”, how much spam do YOU have to deal with?
thankfully my personal e-mail address is free from spam (dotmac has great spam filters), but my work address typically gathers 100+ spams a DAY, and thats just the spams that make it past my ELEVEN pages of filter criteria, after a weekend, my junk box can have up to 300 spams in it
frell the spammers with a rusted qualta blade, this scum has no right to exist, i fully support capital punishment for spammers
what pisses me off even more is that nothing we do is stemming the tide of spam, responding with an “unsubscribe” message merely confirms the e-mail address as valid and sets you up for more spam, ignoring spam doesn’t seem to work, it seems like nothing short of saturation bombing with thermonuclear devices would work…
yes, please, bring out a “do not spam” list, or as posted above, it’d be easier and more efficient to create a do spam list, as i think 99.999% of people would’nt want to be spammed
Sorry but the golden rule does not apply to intruders.
If someone enters my home uninvited (yes I know it’s VERY different than spamming) I certainly don’t think 'well I would never want to be bashed with a baseball bat…so I won’t bash him".
Spammers ARE intruders…they lose the right to have an expectation of the golden rule applying to them.
Now…some folks have suggested that the screensaver, if used by LOTS of folks, could slow down interent connection times across the net. I’m not an expert in latency issues…so I’ll wait for more informed opinions about the liklihood the screensaver slowing net traffic down overall. If that really IS the case…then I would re think my use of the screensaver.
Guys - quit with the spammer bashing. I hate them too, but that’s not what this thread is for, and I will ask a moderator to close it accordingly if we can’t keep on topic.
To reiterate, the topic is whether the bandwidth robbing anti-spammer screensaver distributed by Lycos, given that it is capable of producing a DDOS attack, is an unethical vigilante method of exercising justice in a jurisdiction for which laws do not exist, or are grossly insufficient. Conversely, this tactic may be ethical in that it is self-evolving behaviour in a system which is not (effectively) governed by any other means.
(on topic) comments?
Speaking as a former email admin. People don’t really think rational about spam. They just get sick of seeing naked pregnant teenage asian farm girls humping their she-male horses and other barnyard friends and lose all sense of proportion.
Is this DDoD approach logical? Spam is clogging the internet, so let us try to use more bandwidth to fight it! No that is not logical. Cutting off ones nose to spite ones face is what it amounts to. And no, it is not ethical. It will inevitably affect those who have done no wrong.
Would it be ethical to launch this attack on someone who had done no wrong? Will this attack really defend anyone against further spamming? No, so we can’t justify this as “self defense.” It may inconvenience some, but not all spammers while inconveniencing many others who are not spammers.
Anti-Spam groups have used various attacks against those perceived as spammers before. Some of the people it perceived as spammers were those that accepted incoming spam that was trying to relay through the server and dropped it on the floor. In no way were these servers sending spam, but they were added to the black list all the same. Once on the black list it is difficult to get off it completely because some people will hang onto old versions. It can also be difficult to get anyone to care that they are blacklisting legitimate email servers. Antispammers also conducted “tests” that would crash some types of servers because it was alleged that these tests would show if certain others were vulnerable to being open relays.
The groups were eventually sued to the point they are now a splintered shell compared to the force they used to be. This DDoS strikes me as a cowardly attempt to get the old bullying power back with less chance that the lawsuits will be able to touch those who put together the list of those to attack.
Ethically and logically this is like arming a militia and having them spray bullets into a crowd on the grounds that someone sprayed bullets into a crowd you were in and they might do it again.
Jailing an innocent person is immoral.
Jailing a guilty person is not.
If the government is unwilling to do something about it, when clearly someone with the resources of the government could, then I see no reason why we should not.
In this case, proof of guilt should be undeniable, however, there needs to be a link between the spam and the company, that is, the company should solicit the services of the spammer. Otherwise, a spammer could spam FOR m$, and while we all would like to DDOS M$, it’s unjustified in this case.
What is NEEDED is a criminal investigation, which only the govt can provide.
Is it ethical? Probably not.
Do we care? Hell no! Stake 'em out on anthills for all of me…
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- The problem is that if it is ethical or not, it is about the only way to act directly against the offending computers in a speedy manner.
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- The problem is that if it is ethical or not, it is about the only way to act directly against the offending computers in a speedy manner.
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The thing about DDOS attacks is that they invariable have ‘collateral’. You can’t hit a spammer site without creating traffic elsewhere along the way, and that may seriously inconvenience other innocent parties.
So they may sound appealing, but they are not a solution.
Sure it does. Are you saying you should be able to break into the intruder’s home and take what you want? I doubt it.
In your home, maybe. But it doesn’t give you the right to go into his house and start going at him.
You have the right to defend yourself against spam as it “enters your home” (i.e., e-mail account). It doesn’t mean that it’s ethical to do the same thing to a spammer. If you do ANY DDoS attack you are no better than the spammer (or hacker) himself, not matter how much you can justify your behavior.
And, yes, I get a lot of spam. But, you see, I like to think I’m better than the spammers and won’t stoop to their tactics. Those who argue it’s ethical are on the same level as the spammers who think their practices are OK.
And, as lee pointed out, it’s not only unethical, it’s bad tactics. It might feel good, but it isn’t going to make the slightest difference ultimately.