Fergie's Tech Blog

The Carrot & Stick Approach to Internet Pollution

Brian Krebs writes on Security Fix:

Study after study show that ISPs in the United States lead the way in providing connectivity to computers that are a major source of malicious activity online, from bot-infected, spam-spewing PCs to compromised computers acting as download sites for malicious software or hosts for phishing Web sites. While it is true that some network providers do a much better job than others in cleaning up problem sites and PCs that are part of their networks, in far too many cases problematic customers are allowed to pollute the Internet for weeks or even months at a time.

Experts say it often costs ISPs more to field a support call from a customer seeking help in cleaning up a virus-infected PC than the provider will make from that customer in an entire year. The result is that -- unless problematic customers are consuming way more than their share of Internet bandwidth -- network providers often find it more cost-effective to simply ignore problematic customers.

I'm not suggesting that taxing online access is the way to fix this problem. But perhaps the time has come for Congress to at least hold out the threat of more government involvement in this space as a means of encouraging Internet providers to do the right thing on security.

posted by Fergie @ 10/18/2007 10:37:00 AM