Quote:
Originally Posted by trfour
I read an article a while back by an Internet security expert, and he said " that until ISP's get involved in monitoring and filtering out the hacks, that they would be getting much worse in the coming year.
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He's talking about something different (if he really is an "expert"). There are things an ISP can do with their own routers to block or drop certain incoming connections from networks that are known to host a lot of spamming or rouge activity. These tend to be large blocks of IP addresses in parts of Russia, China, Pakistan and so on. This has nothing to do with your PC directly, other than if they block the incoming connections then of course the data does not ever get to your PC.
Comcast and several other consumer ISP's offer McAfee (or other mediocre) virus scanning tools for free. This is certainly OK, but you can already start to see the slippery slope it creates. When people start to think that someone else can or should protect them and handle their security, it tends to make them even less responsible and sufficient in terms of participating on the Internet. As we see new things happening online, like streaming video services (Hulu and so on) we also see some ISP's start to feel threatened by these services. Rather than adjust their price or content to compete, they "compete" by impeding YOUR access to competitive content.
If you allow a precedent to be set that the ISP should take full responsibility for your online security and access it WILL lead to nothing but higher prices and lower quality service over time.