Microsoft VP Suggests 'Net Tax To Clean Computers

Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft's Vice President for Trustworthy Computing, Scott Charney, speaking at the RSA conference in San Francisco, has floated an interesting proposal to deal with infected computers: Approach the problem of dealing with malware infections like the healthcare industry, and consider using 'general taxation' to pay for inspection and quarantine. Using taxes to deal with online criminal activity is not a new idea, as demonstrated by last year's Louisiana House vote to levy a monthly surcharge on Internet access to deal with online baddies."

Comments

Re:Free anti-virus with Internet service purchase!

[pookemon]

See I read your rant, and the one above it as "I used Norton's once so all virus scanners are bad".

I've been using Avast for the last few years. Free for home use and a damn good product.

A) Sure it updates almost every day - but it has almost no impact on my network (and I'm from Oz where "Broadband" means a bit faster than dial up).
B) Its impact when scanning is not noticable. It scans the file you modify or try to open.
C) WTF? What defaults? The "I can download and run viruses by default" defaults?
D) Avast 99% of the time is a pair of icons in your system tray. If the look and feel of your virus scanner is one of you concerns then your worried about the wrong thing...
E) Avast doesn't constantly use CPU time. A decent virus scanner of any kind would us OS Hooks to identify when it needs to look at files/processes. It won't need to be doing anything unless you are and then it only needs a quick look at the file/process to see if it recognises it.
F) Avasts free license expires every 12 months. It takes around a minute to renew. Big deal.
G) *sigh* Seriously. There are millions of gamers around the world that have virus scanners installed. There's also quite a number of game developers with virus scanners installed. When was the last time that you read that your virus scanner should be disabled before playing game ? Sure the downloads of updates can cause a few moments of lag - but big deal.
H) I'm sorry but WTF? Sure Sony's rootkit can be considered a threat. But REAL threats are actually more things like Confiker, Trojans etc. Viruses etc. that (a) might destroy your PC, (b) be used as part of a botnet, (c) steal your personal data etc.

You're worried about how you virus scanner looks, and a slight interruption to your gaming, but not about the impact of having a virus. The fact that that virus may wipe your machine, cause your machine to be responsible for attacking other machines, or cause masses of SPAM e-mail to be sent out doesn't concern you? I take it then that your ISP doesn't care that you might be responsible for infecting other machines, sending SPAM etc.

Take your tinfoil hat off and go out and get some sunshine.