Make Love Not Spam

[ QUOTE ]
Lycos Europe has started to distribute a special screensaver in a controversial bid to battle spam. The program - titled Make Love Not Spam, and available for Windows and the Mac OS - sends a request to view a spam source site. When a large number of screensavers send their requests at the same time the spam web page becomes overloaded and slow.

[/ QUOTE ]
Link to full article.

What do you guys think of this? Is it a good idea or not?

EDIT: Please try to keep this civil. Empath and the CPF administration have given us a chance to discuss this, and I don't want to abuse the privilege. Thanks. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I'm trying it ... pretty neat concept. Nice screensaver, too (techno!).

The makelovenotspam.com domain isn't Lycos'. It belongs to a swedish marketing firm. From all I can tell, their links and references to Lycos is one way to Lycos; I didn't find a link from Lycos to them. A dDOS attack of any site, even a spammer's, is unethical and damaging to internet. Why anyone would willingly install dDOS trojan software on their own computer is beyond me, regardless of who some slick marketing firm claims it's directed.

Would you really trust a marketing firm with a responsibility to determine who does and doesn't merit a dDOS attack?

Anyone installing the software on their computer, willingly, and making themselves a willing participant in a dDOS attack is taking a chance of being disconnected by their ISP, and suffering whatever legal ramifications might be involved. That's in addition to any damage done to your system by the willing installation of a suspect program from an integral part of the net's marketing and spamming sector. Most hackers, spammers and marketing firms try sneaking their dDOS trojans onto the unsuspecting users computers, to run attacks against whoever they consider worthy of their attacks. This is a new effort, I suppose, to see if they can get people to willingly install it.

This thread could end up being simply a discussion of the ethics involved and such, it could end up being a vehicle to warn of the danger, or it could play an instrumental part in getting it onto more computers. I'm concerned that it would likely do the later.

I'm concerned about CPF being an instrumental part. I'm closing this thread, at least until I can discuss it with the other administrators and moderators. It may or may not remain closed. If you see it reopened, it's because we decided collectively to see where it goes.

Edit: Re-opened

Why would you install a program on your machine that lets *someone* else remotely cause your computer to do *something* against *someone*? How do you know what it is doing, and against whom? How do you know if you approve?

?!@#?!

-john

At best it seems like a wrong headed approach and at worst it oversimplifies a complex problem by making people think that by just clicking a button they are somehow having a positive effect. Even if the target were the Win box users with broadband who are oblivious to their spam sending Trojans it still wouldn't make sense. IMO this screen-saver is about anger and some kind of instant gratification -- not any kind of real answer to the spam problem.

Most people are so far into denial about spam that they just want someone else to fix it for them. Their government.(Yikes!) Their ISP. (Fat chance) If this were a simple problem we'd be past it by now.

It seems to me that everyone must take real steps on their own if we are to have an impact on spam.

The same people who spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars maintaining their car every month will look at you like you are crazy if you suggest that they spend $6 a month on a privacy service equipped with the tools needed to wrestle the control of their email back from the spammers.

Newsflash-- The email account you get for "free" from your ISP is a spam-trap. It has no real tools to fight spam because they want your mailbox perpetually filled with spam so they can move you up to a "premium email plan" at a higher price. It still won't have any meaningful anti-spam tools but it will have more room, so you won't get so many 'mailbox full' notices -- for a while. To speed things along your ISP sells your "free" email address to any spammer who will pay a fraction of a cent for it.

The above is true for very nearly all free web-based emails, too, with few exceptions.

So aside from the idiots who actually click and buy from spam and make it profitable for its purveyors the bulk of email users haven't yet figured out that their privacy may actually be worth something to them and that the ball is really in their court.

For the foreseeable future spam is not going to get any better. The government and screen-savers will only make it worse. It will continue to get worse until everyone realizes that their individual behavior is responsible for it. I fully expect people to go on using "free" email accounts and carping about spam until email either completely breaks or becomes totally useless.

For the most part, the real problem hasn't even been defined yet.

If the direction we are heading now is any indication, spam is going to be a real problem for a very long time.

That felt good. Thanks for reading.

ok I am going to ask stupid questions

why can't spam be eliminated by making it againsed the law ?

why can't spyware be outlawed and the people who make it be hunted down and jailed ?

now spam would be harder but spyware should be easy to wipe out.

[ QUOTE ]
why can't spam be eliminated by making it againsed the law ?

[/ QUOTE ]

People break laws. Spammers send spam from places our laws can't reach. Spammers spoof return addresses. Spammers take over the computers of hapless users and may use each one's broadband connection for only a few minutes EDIT-- to send spam to thousands -- before switching to another commandeered machine. Aside from the jurisdictional problems -- if laws were enough to insure proper behavior we would have no need for police, courts or prisons.

There is also the generic problem that legislators are incapable of crafting laws which can solve problems that they know nothing about. Time after time such laws only make the problem worse.

[ QUOTE ]

why can't spyware be outlawed and the people who make it be hunted down and jailed ?

[/ QUOTE ]

Much spy-ware is installed by folks who refuse to read the EULA before installing -- which is why anti-virus programs won't touch them.

On a more subtle level, in the States, lobbyists have convinced Congress that your personal information is not your own and that if this were to change all commerce in the US would come to a screeching halt. This misconception is tangential to the spam problem which is, to a certain extent, a privacy problem in the first place.

In June of 2004 more spam was sent than in ALL of 2003. Eventually it will have to be taken seriously, even if only as a productivity issue.

The dirty truth is that there is no quick 'n simple way out of the spam problem. First users must realize that only they can control it. Then they must follow through and do it. This will involve a 'learning curve' like any other endeavor. Right now the vast majority of users refuse to accept any responsibility for the spam that they recieve and they are waiting for someone else -- anyone else -- to fix it for them. That is not going to happen.

it is very rare in my life that I actually feel hatred ... SPAM is one of those reasons .

Sub_Umbra ... can you tell me more about this privacy service you were talking about?

bernhard

[ QUOTE ]
Empath said:
The makelovenotspam.com domain isn't Lycos'. It belongs to a swedish marketing firm. From all I can tell, their links and references to Lycos is one way to Lycos; I didn't find a link from Lycos to them. A dDOS attack of any site, even a spammer's, is unethical and damaging to internet. Why anyone would willingly install dDOS trojan software on their own computer is beyond me, regardless of who some slick marketing firm claims it's directed.

Would you really trust a marketing firm with a responsibility to determine who does and doesn't merit a dDOS attack?

Anyone installing the software on their computer, willingly, and making themselves a willing participant in a dDOS attack is taking a chance of being disconnected by their ISP, and suffering whatever legal ramifications might be involved. That's in addition to any damage done to your system by the willing installation of a suspect program from an integral part of the net's marketing and spamming sector. Most hackers, spammers and marketing firms try sneaking their dDOS trojans onto the unsuspecting users computers, to run attacks against whoever they consider worthy of their attacks. This is a new effort, I suppose, to see if they can get people to willingly install it.

This thread could end up being simply a discussion of the ethics involved and such, it could end up being a vehicle to warn of the danger, or it could play an instrumental part in getting it onto more computers. I'm concerned that it would likely do the later.

I'm concerned about CPF being an instrumental part. I'm closing this thread, at least until I can discuss it with the other administrators and moderators. It may or may not remain closed. If you see it reopened, it's because we decided collectively to see where it goes.

Edit: Re-opened

[/ QUOTE ]

Empath,

You brought up a lot of good points as well as sound advice, therefore I removed the screensaver from my system.

Thanks!
Dave

[ QUOTE ]

Sub_Umbra ... can you tell me more about this privacy service you were talking about?


[/ QUOTE ]

Kiessling,
I've posted a link in the past but I took it down because sometimes I get so carried away that I have a hard time telling exactly what is appropriate forum behavior. I'll PM you with the link within a few hours. If anyone else is interested, PM me and I'll send you the link, also.

It doesn't look like it's going to well for their project.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4065751.stm

Antispam Screensaver Story

It looks like the hackers only need to do a bit of reverse engineering, and they've got 80,000 ready made trojans already and voluntarily installed on computers.

[ QUOTE ]
Kiessling said:
it is very rare in my life that I actually feel hatred ... SPAM is one of those reasons...bernhard

[/ QUOTE ]
Bernhard,

Spam used to drive me nuts until my girlfriend helped me deal with it through a simple attitude adjustment: Face the fact that spam exists and will continue to exist for the forseeable future; just accept it like you accept the weather or traffic and try not to make a value judgment. If you can consciously relax your body while you're doing that it can really help neutralize it. The point is that it's a reality, a fact of life. Acceptance is not approval but it can neutralize a lot of anger and annoyance. That acceptance of reality is the most important part.

Every morning when I boot up and open Outlook Express I know I'll see spam, maybe a lot of it. OK I accept that. In the beginning I practiced the relaxing technique as as soon as I opened OE, but after a while I no longer needed to do that. The first thing I do is delete all spam. I've gotten used to doing that and it takes just a few seconds. Even if it takes twenty seconds am I really going to give myself a coronary over twenty lousy seconds? It's become so routine I don't even think about it anymore. I can honestly say that spam has become a non-issue for me.

Well, almost.

Brightnorm

[ QUOTE ]
brightnorm said:
[ QUOTE ]
Kiessling said:
it is very rare in my life that I actually feel hatred ... SPAM is one of those reasons...bernhard

[/ QUOTE ]
Bernhard,

Spam used to drive me nuts until my girlfriend helped me deal with it through a simple attitude adjustment: Face the fact that spam exists and will continue to exist for the forseeable future; just accept it like you accept the weather or traffic and try not to make a value judgment. If you can consciously relax your body while you're doing that it can really help neutralize it. The point is that it's a reality, a fact of life. Acceptance is not approval but it can neutralize a lot of anger and annoyance. That acceptance of reality is the most important part.

Every morning when I boot up and open Outlook Express I know I'll see spam, maybe a lot of it. OK I accept that. In the beginning I practiced the relaxing technique as as soon as I opened OE, but after a while I no longer needed to do that. The first thing I do is delete all spam. I've gotten used to doing that and it takes just a few seconds. Even if it takes twenty seconds am I really going to give myself a coronary over twenty lousy seconds? It's become so routine I don't even think about it anymore. I can honestly say that spam has become a non-issue for me.

Well, almost.

Brightnorm

[/ QUOTE ]

Brightnorm,

The way you deal with spam can be a lesson for all of us in other annoyances in life. Thanks for helping ME to deal with my pet peeves (traffic, rude people, LOUD stereo's in cars, etc,etc.).

I look at spam as an annoying cost of the internet. Where you have cable tv and pay for it up front to watch channels with... you got it.... spam... you pay twice. Advertisers help make things free, the idea is to minimize the annoyance and intrusion upon your time and life and privacy to a minimum.

[ QUOTE ]
Empath said:
It looks like the hackers only need to do a bit of reverse engineering, and they've got 80,000 ready made trojans already and voluntarily installed on computers.

[/ QUOTE ]

And, the users have allowed it access to the Internet through their firewalls.

Very nifty.

-john

I think there are a couple of ways ISPs can reduce the problem of spam. For starters, charge users per email past a certain reasonable amount (maybe a few hundred) per month. With regular mail you pay per piece. Why not with email? This would allow most people to still send their normal amount of emails but force the spammers who send millions each month to pay or to simply not send them. Sure, they could get around this by opening a bunch of accounts under different names with different or even the same ISP, but if all ISPs had the same policy they would end up paying whatever the ISP's monthly fee is per every few hundred emails. Since the success rate on spam is so low, the only way it is profitable is if it costs virtually nothing per email. This policy would take the profit out of it.

Next, ISPs and free email providers could block the addresses of known spammers and more important not deliver any email that doesn't have the correct email address in the "To:" field. I don't see why either is so hard to do, especially the latter which involves a simple check of the "To:" field. Yahoo for example seems to do a pretty good job blocking spam. I generally get only about 15 or so unsolicited emails a month, although about two years ago I was only getting one or two.

Finally, yes, make spam illegal, prosecute and/or file civil suits against those who send it. Try to get all countries who wish to be our trading partners to do likewise. Block emails from any countries who refuse to adopt these policies. Combined, these things can rid us of almost all spam very quickly.

It needs to be said that spam wouldn't have even continued if not for the idiots who buy from it. When you get spam, even if it's for something you're interested in, don't buy from them on principle. Those who send spam need to learn that it, like telemarketing, is a completely unacceptable way to advertise their products. Perhaps a centralized marketing exchange where everyone can advertise their wares on the Internet might be a good idea. Frankly, I see anything other than printed ads, commerce exchanges, and company websites as unacceptable ways to advertise. TV commercials are another thing I find totally obnoxious.

On another note, so-called privacy policies need to be changed. I'm sick and tired of having to send in the same forms (at my expense) every single year to be taken off the advertising lists of my bank's "associates". And even at that, they're still free to give my name to some of their "selected associates". The rule should be that unless you give permission otherwise, a business is not allowed to share your name with anyone. The Direct Marketing Association is one good reason I'm buying more and more of what I need on eBay. At least I know that if I need one thing and one thing only from someone I won't be pestered with catalogs from a million "related" businesses with things I have absolutely no interest in buying. Businesses are complaining that things will grind to a halt if name sharinig wasn't allowed? Well, if I have a news flash for them-it's grinding to a halt, from me anyway, because sharing is allowed.