Lycos Europe Anti-Spam Ads Pulled After Three Days
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Lycos Europe&#39;s controversial anti-spam advertising campaign has been discontinued after only three days due to charges that it promotes vigilantism.
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com. Lycos Europe took the fight to the enemy Monday, by launching a screensaver that conducts a group denial-of-service (DoS) attack against sites selling products marketed via spam.
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Internet users are being given the chance to hit back at the spammers that have become the scourge of the web, thanks to free software being distributed by Lycos Europe, the internet portal.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has suspended trading for 35 companies that allegedly benefited from spam e-mail campaigns to hype their stocks. The SEC action Thursday is the most suspensions of companies with stock hyped in spam, the SEC said in a news release. The suspensions, which will last for 10 business days, are part of a stepped-up SEC effort called Operation Spamalot aimed at protecting investors from potentially fraudulent spam campaigns hyping small-company stock, the SEC said. The e-mails used phrases such as "ready to explode," "ride the bull" and "fast money." The 35 companies have been quoted on the Pink Sheets over-the-counter stock service. They are not listed on any exchange or on the OTC Bulletin Board, the SEC said. The SEC estimated that 100 million such stock-trading e-mail messages are sent each week, often triggering dramatic spikes in share prices and trading volumes before the spamming stops and investors lose their money, the SEC said. "When spam clogs our mailboxes, it's annoying," SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said in a statement. "When it rips off investors, it's illegal and destructive. Today's trading suspensions, and actions that will follow, should send a clear message to spammers: the SEC will hold you accountable." The SEC said it continues to investigate the source of the spam. Among the spam campaigns noted by the SEC: * On Dec. 15, shares in Apparel Manufacturing Associates closed at $0.06, with a trading volume of 3,500 shares. After a weekend spam campaign proclaiming, "Huge news expected out on APPM, get in before the wire, we're taking it all the way to $1.00," trading volume on Dec. 18, volume hit 484,568 shares with the price spiking to over $0.19 a share. Two days later the price climbed to $0.45. By Dec. 27, the price was back down to $0.10 on trading volume of 65,350 shares. * On Dec. 19, trading in Goldmark Industries closed at $0.17 on trading volume of 126,286 shares. On Dec. 20, the spam campaign started with e-mail proclaiming "GDKI IS MAKING EVERYONE BANK!" and setting a five-day price target of $2. By Dec. 28, spam boasted of a price spike of 152 percent in two days and promised a five-day price target of $1. That same day, the company's stock closed at $.35 on a volume of more than 5 million shares. By Jan. 9, the closing share price was back down to $0.15. Advanced Powerline Technologies, iPackets International, Software Effective Solutions, Sports-stuff.com, and UBA Technology are among the other companies affected by the SEC suspensions. Secure Computing, a cybersecurity software vendor, praised the SEC for its action. The 35 companies suspended represent some of the most "mass-promoted" companies, the company said. There are more than 600 stock symbols sold on the Pink Sheets and OTC Bulletin Board exchanges that have been promoted through spam in the past year, the company said in an e-mail.
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Lycos Europe appeared to have pulled a controversial antispam screensaver program from its site last week, after coming under fire from both security experts and the spammers themselves.
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A Lycos spokesperson explained that the screen saver had been pulled while the company deals with hosting and management issues. He said it had been downloaded by over 100,000 users.
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Lycos is offering its customers a screensaver that helps to launch denial-of-service attacks on spammers&#39; websites. The controversial move is designed to use the idle processing power of a computer to slow down the response times from spammers&#39; websites.
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Lycos Europe released a screen saver that would pepper spam sites with requests for pages, in an effort to burden their bandwidth.  Now it's disabled, but in very fixable ways...
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Lycos Europe, founders of the &quot;Make Love Not Spam&quot; initiative, has pulled their bandwidth-targeting screensaver from the site.
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Even in the fleeting and transitory world of technology, Lycos&#39; spam-busting screensaver was the most short-lived of initiatives.
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Spammers are suspected of hacking into and downing Lycosâs anti-spam Web site just hours after it went live. The Web site is currently inaccessible and could also be the victim of a DDoS attack.
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A malicious email purporting to offer a link to download Lycos&#39; controversial spam busting screensaver is infecting users with a Trojan - proving that the fall out from the botched and now ditched service will continue to cause users pain.
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Lycos has withdrawn its &quot;Make love not spam&quot; application after a string of negative criticism. Visitors to the Web site were presented Friday with a graphic urging them to &quot;stay tuned.
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Lycos Europe&#39;s Make Love Not Spam screensaver was unavailable Saturday following a string of bad publicity, Cnet News.com reported.
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MADRID, Spain Some computer users are about to find out if fighting fire with fire works when they fight spam with spam. German-based Lycos Europe offers a free screensaver program that hits back at spam senders by flooding them with junk traffic.
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Lycos Europe appeared to have pulled a controversial anti-spam screensaver program from its site on Friday, after coming under fire from both security experts and the spammers themselves.ADVERTISEMENTSolaris 10(TM) OS: Position your business ten moves ahead.Solaris 10 OS has arrived and provides even more reasons for the world's most demanding businesses to operate on this, the leading UNIX platform. Like the fact you can run Linux and Solaris applications side-by-side and run the same OS on SPARC(R), AMD Opteron(TM), and Intel processor-based systems. Discover more reasons and how Solaris 10 OS can move your business ahead today.
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The Blue Frog system crippled spam-advertised websites by deluging them with opt-out requests, until a retaliatory cyberattack killed it.  Now activists are redeploying the technology to send political messages that can't be ignored. By Ryan Singel.