ZombieMeter keeps track of hacked PCs

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Stole My Thunder, Think about this too

How would you like to be the customer service rep that has to field the miad of calls from obstinate users when there computers are cut off? OOBIE DOBIE. I do not know what the solution is. And I like some of your but there are some holes to overcome in some of yours.

"ISPs offer FREE (as in beer) end-user training classes and educate people on the necessity to keep their computers current with software updates."

My ISP offers "free" training, I've been to their classes a million years ago and the information was pretty good. The problem was participation. People were just too busy to bother going. Gateway used to offer free training to their new customers at their box stores, participation was low. I don't know if Dell still does, but they used to offer setup of the peeeeceeee and that is all the "tech" did was set up the u-know-what and insure the updates where installed, no further teaching outside of the basics.

"Also, inform them that Windows is not their only option, and, for instance, they won't need to spend $50/year on anti-virus subscriptions if they use Linux (for now, anyway)."

This could be implimented at the sales level. I have been "squawking" for years that 1. sales people are missing opportunities for incremental sales and 2. teaching the customer the importance of maintaining 3rd party security software on their peecees. Bestbuy does in store updates on new pcs and they "teck" does offer incremental sales of anit-virus but all too often the pc abuser says something like "doesn't it come with Norotns already?" The teck could but does not take the opportunity to teach and make that sale.

"Obviously, classes can't be compulsory, so there must be some mechanism for disabling/sanitizing 'zombie' pcs. How about a quarantined network that uses a proxy at the ISP end to conduct transactions with the internet? It will obviously be at a considerably slower speed (and this should be a condition of the SLA), but will offer the same unfettered access to the internet. Customers would be advised that their machines are quarantined until the trojan/malware is removed."

Me thinks this is your best idea. The pc abuser is going to gripe but in the words of all the utopians out there, "it is for the greater good." I've argued this before but it has been my expirience that when the peecee abuser is approached in a explanatory manner what the problem is with their pc they will take steps to fix it. They may let the fix laps later on but at least steps have been taken to get the zombie out of the box.

"My $0.02. Bash away."

Money well spent.




I like your quarenteened proxie idea.

Posted by: Squawkbox   Posted on: 05/27/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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