Yesterday a group consisting of major Australian ISPs – amongst them are Optus, Telstra, Vodafone, AAPT, Virgin, Hutchison 3G as well as Facebook, Google and Microsoft – announced that they prepare “a voluntary industry code to come into force this year” which could mean that “Computers infected with viruses could be “expelled” from the internet”.
The Internet Industry Association, which is made up of over 200 ISP and IT-related companies, is preparing that code in response to an ultimatum of the federal government.
Even though similar efforts have been reported in the past, Australia advanced to be #3 regarding botnet activity worldwide – only beaten by the U.S. and China. Interestingly, Australia wasn’t even to be found in the Top10 of McAfee’s Global Threat report 2 years ago
The sheer abundance of potential victims also explains why it is relatively cheap – 25$ per install – to get malware such as fake anti-virus solutions installed on Australian computers.
The internet industry’s voluntary code of conduct is being pushed by the federal Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy which wants to make the ISPs contact offending customers first before stepping up to more drastic measures like reducing the customers speed or changing their password so they have to contact the helpdesk.
As a last resort, the customers connection will be terminated if they fail to clean up the infection in a given timeframe.
If this gets done right it could very well mean a new era for all of us, meaning less spam, DDoS and other common nuisances found on todays internet.
What do you think about that? Should other countrys follow suit?
