h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

(reposted as I inadvertently deleted this from my Journal earlier)

It can't have escaped many peoples' attentions that there's a bit of a turf war going on at the moment. I've personally received 735 viruses in my inbox in the last two weeks, with no sign of the tide stopping or even reducing, at least not in the short term.

The incredible thing is how this is still an issue. There are a couple of approaches that could stop the spread pretty much overnight if used correctly.

INTERNET PROVIDERS

Internet providers provide mail servers. Generally pretty good, reliable ones, so there is absolutely no reason for anyone to be running an email server from their own computer.

In that case, why do internet providers allow this? Blocking the ports used to send mail would prevent spam and viruses being sent without the user's knowledge, making life easier for the rest of us.

Sure, some people would whine about this but if they really need to run a mail server they should get a non-residential service.

Doing so would actually reduce costs for an internet provider because of the savings in bandwidth - unlike end-users, the ISP pays for its connectivity based on the amount of data transferred.

EDUCATION

As long as my virus scanner is updated regularly, it's going to be pretty hard for me to get infected, more so because I know not to open unsolicited email attachments offering me 'a powful tool' or similar.

I didn't get the Blaster worm because my computer runs Windows Update for me regularly, so I had the appropriate patch long before the virus started distributing itself.

I run a decent personal firewall, so even if I did get inadvertently infected the virus couldn't spread without me giving it explicit permission to do so.

People need education. Every internet provider should provide simple (and usually free) security tools, and information on what to do and not to do to keep safe online. Most people would sit up and listen if they realised that there was a possibility that their data was at risk if they didn't take simple precautions.


None of this would be too hard to put in place. It took five minutes to persuade my father of the need to keep his computer updated, and some internet providers have already put their security arrangements in place. Certainly, something needs to be done before email is destroyed as a useful communications medium.

Well said. I can't believe the number of people that seem to be totally unprotected. There's a particular virus that for some weeks now has kept cropping up in my email - usually at least once a day, sometimes many more times.

Heh, I've had 380 viruses in my inbox in the last week alone. My spam and virus load makes up around 95% of my inbox when I check it...