[Mimedefang] Lycos Screensaver that attacks Spammers

[WBrown at e1b.org]

mimedefang-bounces at lists.roaringpenguin.com wrote on 12/01/2004 10:29:57 
AM:

> While I question the 100% legality of such a tactic, it DOES make sense 
that 
> we could make a SURBL site-still-online-verification-list that would 
cause 
> an LWP request to URLs per incoming email. This could be used to verify 
that 
> websites are still online which is valid and is done in response only to 

> email received at your server.

The system doesn't attach the sending mail servers.  In fact they state "
The targets generally are not the servers used to do the actual mailings; 
these days, those servers are most often legitimate ones co-opted into 
spamming by viruses and worms."  Well, maybe sites that have such mail 
servers should be impacted enough so that they clean them up.  Not that 
causing extra expense and performance problems for the spamvertized web 
sites is a bad thing, but I doubt it will do much to clean up our inboxes.

I do think the creator is opening themselves to a lawsuit and other 
retaliation (DOS from spammers).  I'm having touble connecting myself to 
even look at it.