amungusPremium
join:2004-11-26
America Reviews:
 ·AT&T DSL Service
| interesting can't believe this problem is so out of hand that these crooks can make money hand over fist beyond the drug trade.
glad to hear Cox is being somewhat proactive about the situation... but there is obviously a much larger problem...
when I first signed up for Cox, I told my roommate NOT to let them connect me directly to their modem, or at least to LEAVE it that way! ..when I got home a few hours later, I was staring at a modem hooked directly to my box.
They simply should not allow ANYONE to connect to the cable infrastructure without a hardware router/firewall. I immediately went out and bought a cheap (relatively... $100 at the time) Netgear router/switch... we also had to share the connection between our two computers...
Still a decent little router for being wired, has 8MB of RAM and good LAN performance. It's effectiveness in keeping the nasty away from the house was/is priceless.
IMO there should be some way to require the ISP to either rent/sell some sort of router/switched/firewall or modem combo thereof. From what I understand, many DSL modems already do this... a friend of mine has one such unit from SBC, but still uses my old router/switch unit anyway because he doesn't trust 'em for one, and just to have a switch...
Cable works differently than DSL, and all these tests every so often about how fast you can become infected are just getting much worse, and much nastier. I just don't see how the cable co's can simply ignore these things. I also doubt a DSL line would get you "infected" as quickly as a wide open cable connection... are there tests on both???
Another problem, what is the ISP to do, just cut off their customers with no explanation??? Call these people and tell them they've been cut because their computer has been hijacked??? It's got to be a problem with logistics and sheer laziness.
To start giving out real protection instead (or at least in conjunction with) of halfway clunky, voluntarily installed software is the best proactive solution...
a condum (software, which many ISP's already give away...) and a chastity belt (hardware) for the internet. |
