Lycos produced a screensaver that when active, sent small information requests to a small number of notorious and well-known spam-producing web sites.  The intention was to create a dramatic increase in requests for information that it would slow down the spammers’ servers, but perhaps more importantly cost them money, since most of them pay their ISP charges according to the amount of data flowing to and from their sites.

Lycos designed the screensaver so that it routed the information requests via their own central server, allowing them to control the volume and thus the effect that the attack was having.  They further claimed that they would not cause any of the spammers’ servers to become over-loaded and fail.

However, it was always going to be a controversial step to take, since in effect Lycos was mounting a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, which is illegal in many countries. 

Over 100,000 copies of the screensaver were downloaded in just one month, and it proved successful.  Monitoring of the target servers indicated that in fact, some were actually brought down by Lycos action.  Predictably, the spammers retaliated by mounting their own attack, which brought down some of Lycos’ services. 

Many in the IT industry criticised Lycos for their action, but it has gained much support from spam-weary users who are heartily sick of dealing with the growing mountain of unsolicited e-mail.  A brave attempt, but maybe a little mis-guided!