Anti Spam Screensaver Update.

[eno]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4065751.stm

[Jared]

lol, must be too good to be true...

[Saitek]

I know I read that the other day....  not sure what to think.

[Hagar]

I'm sorry but I always thought this was the wrong way of going about it. Anyone using this screensaver is leaving themselves wide open to retaliation. It's also debatable whether it's strictly legal & this seems just as bad to me as anything the spammers are doing.

[Scottler]

The problem as I see it is that you can't fight an irrational enemy rationally.  We can take the moral high ground all day long (I usually do, just not in the case of spam)...the spam will just keep coming.  If we're to end spam, or even put a dent in it, you can't play nice.  It just won't work.  That said, I think it's a travesty that it has come to that.  But that doesn't change the fact that it has.

[Hagar]

The problem as I see it is that you can't fight an irrational enemy rationally.

This is exactly the same dilemma that faces nations in the time of war. If you resort to an enemy's unethical, immoral or downright criminal methods it makes you as bad as they are. If you don't it's quite likely they will win so what are you to do? Either way you lose.

I'm not so worried about the legal aspects in this case. Unless I'm completely wrong about this, sending out these messages from your home PC is like saying to the spammers, "Here I am guys, come & get me".

[Scottler]

I think where the legality would come in is when it becomes a denial of service attack...eg, shutting them down completely.  Being a pest isn't so much of an issue, but when you do something which results in their servers completely crashing, that's sorta bad.  lol  (That's what happend in this case.)

[Craig.]

it worked too well basically

[Scottler]

The good news is that just means there's a need/want for such a thing...

[Saitek]

And now its gone.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4073547.stm

Ben