It sounds like the page did exactly what it was meant to do: notify the customer there is a problem and CenturyLink was taking steps to protect their network, and then provide some options for remediation.
In some cases, a user (if you had CL DSL at your own home, for example) is skilled enough to do the remediation on their own, and in some cases, they aren't. For the users who can't, the correct action is to seek the help of somebody who can remediate the issue, be it a private contractor, a retail location, or a service that CenturyLink offers or recommends.
I would be interested in hearing if sonic.net's Fusion service and AT&T U-Verse have anything similar -- those services seem to be interested in value-adds to traditional "DSL" service by adding inside wire maintenance (another thing CL does offer) and asserting some other management over your LAN, such as provider-owned modems and gateways.
From a product perspective, it's really interesting, because statistically people don't have virus/malware removal skills. CenturyLink already offers
@Ease, at a few tiers (free, and a few tiers with different service) Per
the CIPP page, it actually looks like @Ease subscribers would get the removal for free, and the service they offer is a one-time use fee for that advnced service.
I guess they could do it for free by rolling the cost of @Ease into the base HSI charge and raising prices across the board.
said by catnipman:I called centurylink and raised hell. they said their "Consumer Internet Protection Program" was a 3rd party service and they had no control over it. however, when I demanded they reinstate ISP service immediately or we would switch to comcast on the spot, they magically were able to IMMEDIATELY restore service!
It's likely the aspect they have no control over is the detection. I have no control over when REN-ISAC e-mails me informing me a workstation on my network has pushdo/cutwail on it, but once I quarantine and remediate the issue, I have control over when I let it back on the network.
There may even be a strike system on this Consumer Internet Protection Program.
said by catnipman:Interestingly enough, the BS page also offered a centurylink service, FOR A FEE, to remove whatever it was they claimed was wrong, which was interesting because given that several devices were attached to the service, they can't even tell which device is problematic.
Your wording leads me to believe the fee-based sercvice is optional, so that's good. Though, to be fair, when there is a problem, a customer whose machine has malware on it can actually affect others on the network: both in terms of performance at the local DSLAM and BRAS, and in terms of malware potentially trying to spread itself to other customers' machines.
Access to a technician skilled in remotely troubleshooting virus and malware issues is probably part of the fee for the optional professional clean-up service.
said by catnipman:centurylink's big advantage, however, over the Indians is that they actually disable your ISP service until you pay THEM to remove the virus, while at the same time making sure you have no ability whatsoever for you to fix the problem yourself.
Which is it,
must you pay to have your connectivity restored, or can you self remediate? Earlier in the post you wrote that you were able to have CL disable the walled garden for you. Did they say that there had been some number of infractions?
Do you have screenshots of the walled garden? The times I've seen it or things like it, there was always a button saying essentially "yes, I fixed it." (The above-linked pages about CIPP says there is.)
said by catnipman:Keep an eye on this scam folks, and let's see how far centurylink is able to screw their customers with this one. If this continues happening to my customers, I'm going to have them all switch to comcast.
I personally consider it a problem that comcast doesn't do anything to stop things like this. I see all sorts of phishing and spam messages that, upon inspection of the headers, were sent by mail servers sitting on residential comcast connections. Most likely, unpatched Windows computers infected with things like pushdo/cutwail.