Lycos Pulls Anti-Spam Screensaver

Following what the company says is unexpected demand for its screensaver that targets spam servers with bandwidth-clogging requests, Lycos Europe has pulled "Make love not spam" offline.

The software utilizes processing power from an idle PC to make repeated connections to known spam URLs in an attempt to raise bandwidth fees and make the practice too expensive for spammers. However, questions were raised after two targeted servers were apparently flooded offline by the screensaver despite claims the software has built-in measures to prevent such an event.

Analysts say Lycos Europe is treading a thin line, and its software's actions could be seen as illegal denial of service attacks - even if the victim is a disliked spammer. Leading anti-spam companies have also blasted the "Make love not spam" campaign as a bad approach to fighting the problem.

Nonetheless, the screensaver's popularity suggests users are welcoming the guerilla tactic. Lycos Europe says over 100,000 downloads of the screensaver have been logged, and promises the site will return once administration and hosting issues are worked out.