ISP forced to take action on viruses
Published: 18 Mar 2004 14:55 GMT
"Most customers who send spam are doing so unknowingly," Jeanne Russo, a Comcast spokeswoman, said in an email statement. "Once identified, the accounts are quarantined and contacted to resolve the issue. After the problem has been resolved, the customer is restored to full network access."
Cox Communications, which also runs a cable ISP, scans for potentially compromised accounts and then suspends or quarantines accounts until the owner patches the security hole. The company forces people to send email through internal mail servers rather than to set up their own servers. Spammers often use such servers to piggyback on a network's bandwidth, thereby sending more emails at a faster rate.
But Cox also tries to mix in publicity campaigns aimed at pushing users to update their PC operating systems and patch weak points.
"ISPs need to encourage users to enable automatic patch updates for their Windows systems, evangelise weekly visits to www.windowsupdate.com and www.officeupdate.com, and offer crosslinking or bundles with the latest antivirus and firewall software vendors," Jeff Hartley, a manager of security and abuse for Cox, said in an email statement.
Local phone giants, which are the largest suppliers of digital subscriber line (DSL) access, also face similar problems. Verizon Communications, the largest local phone company in the United States, takes a more user-centric approach. It suspends subscriber accounts only in "egregious" instances of spam abuse but mainly tries to prod its users into taking action.
"We can't sit there and say: 'You're spamming -- we're going to knock you off the wire,'" said Scott Lebredo, a senior technical manager at Verizon Online. "It's your access. You're responsible for it, but you must be educated about how to combat it."
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