On Wed, 3 Dec 2003, Joe Abley wrote: > Live example of how well monetary pinching works in New Zealand -- > there have been cases of people receiving $15,000 monthly phone bills > which are mainly comprised of ADSL traffic charges. So, the traffic > charges stop the rogue traffic, by sending customers bankrupt, but only > about a month or so after the fact.
Did news stories about this get other people in New Zealand to fix their computers, apply patches, use anti-virus? Or were were lots of stories about the "evil" telco ruining grandmothers and orphans? and the telco eventually waived the charges? Toll charges do encourage PBX owners and cordless phone makers to improve the security of their products? Most cordless phones (unlike WiFi) now have automatic authentication between the handset and base (not encryption, just authentication). Most PBX's block outside to outside phone connections (the telephone version of proxy/relay) by default now. If ISPs charged customers $0.000001/email message, would it cure spam or would the spammers just continue to use third-party victims to spam and there would be lots of news stories about grandmothers and orphans getting huge ISP bills? IANAL, but many spammers are already breaking a law by using victim machines without authorization; but would law enforcement be more likely to do something if the victims now had a $50,000 bill from their ISP due to the unauthorized traffic?
