The below is what I’m trying to post:
Regarding the [i]un/under[/i]educated consumer: It is my understanding that it is the ignorance of this teeming mass that is a major factor in the creation of botnets. I have never understood why internet providers have never engaged in a massive education campaign aimed at their customers as to how to prevent virus infections (please, no one go into a pro/con discussion regarding the merits of Linux vis a vis Windows — it’s been discussed [i]ad nauseum[/i]). If the IP should detect unusually large amounts of traffic from a customer’s computer, then it should give the customer a choice: (1) Let the customer resolve the issue by him/herself; (2) let the IP (via remote access) check out the computer; or (3) have service terminated.
I will admit that I see some cons: (1) It’s not spam/denial of service attacks (or at least, as I understand it, anyway) that is/are an issue(s) anymore, it’s hacking and key-logger programs and the like that are the primary culprits nowadays and those are harder to track in part because; (2) hackers are encrypting everything and (as I understand it, anyway) using cloud computing.
Anyway, for what it’s worth (after all, I may have just have clearly demonstrated that I am utterly clueless in regard to the subject), the above is my $0.02.
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8:45A (Eastern)
First of all, I want to thank the people who have taken the trouble to reply. I fear that I wasn’t clear enough about what, precisely, the problem was. So I’m going to describe what was going on (and in the process explain how I inferred just what, exactly, was the problem).
What happened was that I was on a ZDnet forum (not THIS forum, mind you, a different one) when I tried to post the above message in response to ANOTHER posting. So that’s when I came to THIS forum and posted the above question.
Here’s where AND HOW I found out what happened:
I went back to the forum to read more postings and found THAT AN ENTIRE THREAD had been deleted by a moderator; the very same thread that I was originally trying to post a response to. So what must have was this: While I was typing up the post, the moderator must have deleted the post — along with the rest of the thread — causing the system to hang and give the “INTERNAL ERROR” message.
8:58A (Eastern)