whack-a-mole n.
[from the carnival game which involves quickly and repeatedly hitting the heads of mechanical moles with a mallet as they pop up from their holes.] 1. The practice of repeatedly causing spammers' [throwaway account]s and drop boxes to be terminated. 2. After sense 1 became established in the mid-1990s the term passed into more generalized use, and now is commonly found in such combinations as `whack-a-mole windows'; the obnoxious pop-ip advertisement windows spawned in flocks when you surg to sites like Geocities or Tripod.
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