A Spammer’s Christmas
It’s another wasted pre-Christmas morning
And instead of blogging I’ll grouse
About the spam in my InBox
That’s wearing down me and my mouse.
My husband and children are just getting out of their beds
With expectations of breakfast filling their heads.
But last night my InBox was flooded with all sorts of spam crap,
So I haven’t cooked anything, and already I need a nap.
I’d planned on making breakfast and blogging, then hitting the Malls.
But my whole schedule’s been screwed. Those spammers have balls!
Plus, in the midst of deleting unwanted email, my laptop crashed.
As it rebooted, to the kitchen I dashed.
After feeding my family and washing their plates,
I returned to my computer to find more of that spam mail I hate.
When what to my wondering eyes did appear
But a headline that ought to fill spammers with fear!
Lycos has made a little screensaver and it’s free to download.
It targets spam sites with a traffic overload.
It raises their cost of harassing internet users,
Particularly targeting the most well-known abusers:
Like “Cheap Rolex” and “20% Off Phentermine”,
“Enhance Your Performance” and “Hot, Sexy Babes Waiting”!
Plus “Your Mortgage” and “Lottery Winning Notification”,
And “Medical Update” and “Personal Investment Information”!
To hell with them! To hell with them all!
Crash their sites! Crash their sites!
Crash their sites one and alll!
Once installed, the screensaver works when I’m away from my machine,
So it will be targeting the spammers today while I’m out shopping.
And, if you listen close you just might hear my voice cackling with glee:
“Happy Christmas to those who hate spam as much as me!”
*never tease someone who is dieting* *never tease someone who is dieting* *never tease...
Sticking it to the spammers
Lycos has invested a lot in anti-spam infrastructure for their users but spam is still a huge problem. How do you stop the spammers? Passing laws doesn’t work – they just rent servers in places where there are no laws against spamming. The spammers th…
I use Choice Mail at http://www.digiportal.com/ to resolve the Spam. It has saved me much time .
I find that gmail eats spam pretty well. And for existing accounts, SpamNet (now “SafetyBar”, I think, from Cloudmark) eats spam very efficiently. But the latter isn’t free.
The screensaver idea is kinda neat, but it eats more of your CPU and bandwidth.
I realize that what spammers themselves do is of questionable legality, but is it completely on the legal up-and-up to launch a denial-of-service attack on their servers?
If spammers don’t have to play by the rules why do we. DOS attacks are here to save the day.
Keep in mind, that the purpose isn’t really to DOS attack them. The purpose is to raise their bandwidth costs so high that spamming becomes unprofitable. After all, they wouldn’t keep spamming if it weren’t for making so much money from the idiots who actually click the links and buy their products. We can’t get rid of the idiots, but we can get rid of the profits.
First SPAM
I got my first SPAM comment (in triplicate) the other day! Isn’t that important? Isn’t that some sort of milestone for a blog? Thanks to WordPress, they didn’t get posted but are awaiting my approval. I guess that could get annoying too, but it’s n…
I got my first massive spam attack (Phentermine) last night! Spent the afternoon fighting back to just take back what’s mine. I am SO installing this screen saver.
[...] After a mere matter of days, the Lycos anti-spammer screensaver that I wrote about earlier is defunct. A victim of its own popularity? Perhaps. On the other hand, it may just be a c [...]