Lycos Europe was a pan-European network of websites, offering services including communication tools, online communities, web search, e-commerce, web hosting, homepage building and Internet access. It was an independent corporation, sharing no corporate structure with Lycos, Inc. (USA) other than the licensed use of their name in Europe, but Lycos Europe was formed as a joint-venture between Bertelsmann and Telefonica, [1] who owned Lycos Inc. through Terra Lycos. On 26 November 2008, Lycos Europe announced that it was to shut down and sell its remaining assets. [2] [3]
In November 2008, Lycos Europe announced that shareholders had called for its liquidation. Over the following months, it sold as many of its assets as possible and liquidated. Sold assets included the sale of the Danish portal Jubii, the Lycos Chat (which at the time was both the Lycos & Yahoo Chat in Europe) was transferred to a new operator on March 9, 2009, and for a short while rebranded as the Noesis Chat. The Lycos Chat now forms part of Lycos, Inc. (USA) collection of sites, [4] Love@Lycos was sold to a Swedish company. Lycos Europe sold further businesses: the news search Paperball was taken over by Paperball GmbH, Munich. The search engine Fireball now belongs to Ambrosia AG, Zug (Switzerland). Trademark and domains of the French Email-Service Caramail were taken over by United Internet AG, Montabaur. Conversis hosting GmbH continues the free hosting service MultiMania. Since liquidation, Lycos Inc withdrew the right for Lycos Europe to use their name and therefore, Lycos Europe are still partially trading under the name Jubii Europe.
In November 2004, Lycos Europe introduced a Microsoft Windows and Mac OS screensaver program called Make Love Not Spam. It was introduced as both marketing for the then-new Lycos email service Spray Mail, and as a way for users to fight spam in a collective manner. [5]
The program worked using users' computers to perform a DDOS attack on the web servers of known spammers. The computers worked in the same way as a botnet except the users were aware of the software and were able to decide if they wished to be involved in the scheme. [6]
On the December 21, 2004 Lycos Europe stopped distributing the program whilst simultaneously 'turning off' the programs on computers that had downloaded it. The decision was made under heavy criticism from Internet and security experts. It is also believed Lycos was subject to large scale counterattacks believed to be from spammers in retaliation. The distribution website was replaced with the words "Stay Tuned". [7]
AOL is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc.
A computer worm is a standalone malware computer program that replicates itself in order to spread to other computers. It often uses a computer network to spread itself, relying on security failures on the target computer to access it. It will use this machine as a host to scan and infect other computers. When these new worm-invaded computers are controlled, the worm will continue to scan and infect other computers using these computers as hosts, and this behaviour will continue. Computer worms use recursive methods to copy themselves without host programs and distribute themselves based on exploiting the advantages of exponential growth, thus controlling and infecting more and more computers in a short time. Worms almost always cause at least some harm to the network, even if only by consuming bandwidth, whereas viruses almost always corrupt or modify files on a targeted computer.
Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, and is a subsidiary of Ybrant Digital.
Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, non-commercial proselytizing, or any prohibited purpose, or simply repeatedly sending the same message to the same user. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, spam mobile apps, television advertising and file sharing spam. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that has Spam in almost every dish in which Vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" repeatedly.
CompuServe was an American online service, the first major commercial one in the world. It opened in 1969 as a timesharing and remote access service marketed to corporations. After a successful 1979 venture selling otherwise under-utilized after-hours time to Radio Shack customers, the system was opened to the public, roughly the same time as The Source. H&R Block bought the company in 1980 and began to more aggressively advertise the service.
Eudora is an email client that was used on the classic Mac OS, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also supported several palmtop computing platforms, including Newton and the Palm OS. Eudora was succeeded by Eudora OSE. In 2018, after being years out of print, the software was open-sourced by the Computer History Museum.
Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming). The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoidable, and repetitive. Email spam has steadily grown since the early 1990s, and by 2014 was estimated to account for around 90% of total email traffic.
Trespass to chattels is a tort whereby the infringing party has intentionally interfered with another person's lawful possession of a chattel. The interference can be any physical contact with the chattel in a quantifiable way, or any dispossession of the chattel. As opposed to the greater wrong of conversion, trespass to chattels is argued to be actionable per se.
Email filtering is the processing of email to organize it according to specified criteria. The term can apply to the intervention of human intelligence, but most often refers to the automatic processing of messages at an SMTP server, possibly applying anti-spam techniques. Filtering can be applied to incoming emails as well as to outgoing ones.
Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising that uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising, and mobile advertising. Advertisements are increasingly being delivered via automated software systems operating across multiple websites, media services and platforms, known as programmatic advertising.
Email harvesting or scraping is the process of obtaining lists of email addresses using various methods. Typically these are then used for bulk email or spam.
Digital reference is a service by which a library reference service is conducted online, and the reference transaction is a computer-mediated communication. It is the remote, computer-mediated delivery of reference information provided by library professionals to users who cannot access or do not want face-to-face communication. Virtual reference service is most often an extension of a library's existing reference service program. The word "reference" in this context refers to the task of providing assistance to library users in finding information, answering questions, and otherwise fulfilling users’ information needs. Reference work often but not always involves using reference works, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. This form of reference work expands reference services from the physical reference desk to a "virtual" reference desk where the patron could be writing from home, work or a variety of other locations.
SORBS was a list of e-mail servers suspected of sending or relaying spam. It had been augmented with complementary lists that include various other classes of hosts, allowing for customized email rejection by its users.
Rogue security software is a form of malicious software and internet fraud that misleads users into believing there is a virus on their computer and aims to convince them to pay for a fake malware removal tool that actually installs malware on their computer. It is a form of scareware that manipulates users through fear, and a form of ransomware. Rogue security software has been a serious security threat in desktop computing since 2008. An early example that gained infamy was SpySheriff and its clones, such as Nava Shield.
Outblaze is a technology company that develops and provides digital media products and services including smartphone games and other apps, social media applications, computer and video games, online transaction systems, and web communication software. Although it started out as an application service provider of hosted Web applications, the company gradually transitioned to the video game industry. In 2009 Outblaze sold its messaging business unit in order to focus primarily on digital entertainment.
NeoPlanet was a Trident-shell graphical web browser initially released in 1997 by New York–based Bigfoot International, Inc. and later maintained and developed by its subsidiary NeoPlanet, Inc. It was one of the first browsers to be fully skinnable.
Jubii is a webportal based in Copenhagen. Jubii provides a search engine and other services, including e-mail.
mail.com is a web portal and web-based email service provider owned by the internet company 1&1 Mail & Media Inc., headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. 1&1 Mail & Media Inc. is a subsidiary of United Internet Group, a publicly listed internet services company based in Montabaur, Germany.
G Data CyberDefense AG is a German software company that focuses on computer security. The company was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Bochum. They are known for being the creators of the world's first antivirus software. G Data uses multiple scanning engines; one is developed in-house and the other is the Bitdefender engine. G Data provides several security products that are targeted at home and business markets. The company has a North American subsidiary located in Newark, Delaware.
Fireball is a search engine operated by Fireball Labs GmbH, based in Munich, Germany. Founded in 1996, Fireball was once the leading search engine in Germany, but quickly declined after being taken over by Lycos Europe and the rise of Google. In 2016, Fireball was re-established as an independent company and relaunched.