Lycos Europe has yanked its “Make Love, Not Spam” anti-spam screensaver from its site, leaving only a cryptic message of “Stay Tuned” in its place. Lycos Europe was heavily criticized for its unusual method of striking back at spammers by security experts, ISPs, and spammers themselves. The company’s screensaver software, launched earlier this week, was designed to cripple spam Web sites by flooding them with requests. The screensaver site was hit with outages much of the week.After inciting a flurry of interest– and over 90,000 downloads, according to the company– some ISPs blocked the http://www.makelovenotspam.com site saying that the screensaver clogged their network with unnecessary traffic. Furthermore, Lycos Europe caught fire from security experts who claimed the company was carrying out a DDOS attack, and from spammers who redirected traffic from the screensaver back to the site that distributes the program. One InfoWorld reader who read my earlier blog post on the screensaver commented that one of the positive claims of the screensaver–that it draws attention to the spam plague–is not valid:“It seems to me that use of this website comes from an awareness of spam and can do little to contribute to peoples understandings. It would appear that this site dumbs down the mechanisms by which spam is spread, as it suggests that spam originates only from dedicated and easily identified servers.” More from Joseph Reeves here.Some reports claim that Lycos Europe has only temporarily removed its screensaver due to overwhelming demand, but the site also removed prominent advertisements for the screensaver from its home page. Technology Industry