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Should ISPs Take More Responsibility In Fending Off Attacks?
from the in-their-own-best-interest... dept
One of the issues with the open nature of the internet, is it isn't always clear who should be responsible for protecting a system against attack. With home users, it's particularly tricky. With companies, you expect them to have technology experts on hand who are supposed to secure the systems, but home users can be quite clueless. The trend, these days, of scammers to make use of wide zombie networks of compromised home computers has led many people to get angry at various ISPs for not doing more to stop the problem. Comcast, for example, was trashed for quite some time, before they finally started taking action against zombie machines used by their subscribers. However, should ISPs be legally liable for their zombified customers? That was the question put forth in a mock lawsuit, where the ISPs were held innocent of aiding and abetting attacks by not stopping the zombies. From a legal standpoint, that sounds like the right decision (and the same that would happen in a real court room). However, that doesn't mean ISPs should feel free to ignore the problem. Obviously, they're still going to be expected in many ways to act as the "home tech support staff" for home users -- and protecting against zombies is a bit part of that. It doesn't just protect their customers, but should cut down on the bandwidth use on their network and other technical issues that turn into costly support calls.
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ISP in control
Then why shouldn't an Internet Service Provider be responsible for providing you Virus free internet, which could criple your business or home computer costing you time & money???
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Re: ISP in control
With home computers, the source of the zombie is the *home computer* which the ISP has no control over. So it's not quite fair to say it's their responsibility.
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Re: ISP in control
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