The largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) and high-speed Internet provider in the United States, Comcast Corp., on Friday announced plans to enforce pop-up message service to its customers in a bid to fight the growing problem of “botnets” in its system.
In an interview, Comcast executives said that they will ask their customers to enlist their computers to their system in order for them to trace possible infected PCs. Once identified, the firm will send pop-up warnings to the users to let them know that their computers were infected.
The infection caused by “botnets” usually result to a slower Internet connection as the infected personal computers eat up bandwidth by sending spam messages and usually act as cybercrime facilitator.
Botnets can infect one or millions of computers if not addressed properly. The larger the number of infected, the slower the bandwidth speed.
Comcast said that they have started the home testing service on Monday in selected households in the Denver area. These pop-up messages were sent directly to the users’ web browsers once it was identified as a host to such attacks.
The Pop-up warnings also contained tips on how to clean up infected PCs. Users will only have to do the step-by-step process prepared by the company.
“Comcast has detected that there may be a virus on your computer(s). For information on how to clean your computer(s), please visit the Comcast Anti-Virus Center,” the pop-up message reads.
Company technical executives said that users have the option to close the warning box if they wish but the company will continue to send this message every seven days until the users manually clean up their desktops.
Botnets have been one of the menaces in the Internet and has been used by hackers to steal vital information from infected PCs. Other attacks that have been carried out have devastating effect to the people using the computers through “denial of service” attacks while some are aimed to steal credit card accounts.
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