Comcast does something right

From Techdirt: Comcast Finally Takes Action Against Zombie Machines.

Well, it’s about freakin’ time. As one of the linked stories notes, five specific IP addresses alone were responsible for more than 45,000 pieces of spam. It isn’t difficult to identify an infected machine by its behavior, and giving the clueless user a stern warning followed by a block on their ability to send mail is the right idea. In fact, shutting down their Internet connection completely until they clean up the virus is an even better idea.

Now, all Comcast has to do is get their support staff on board. My sister and her husband are Comcast subscribers. A couple weeks ago, they lost the ability to send e-mail. I spent several hours on the phone with them and told them they were probably blocked. But when they called Comcast support, they were given a variety of incorrect and sometimes comical answers. The best one was that they had “clogged the e-mail server” and would just have to wait a couple days until the messages had cleared out. Riiiiiiight.

That, of course, was ludicrous. After several hours getting escalated to various people, my sister finally got to the abuse department, which notified her that their account had been blocked for sending spam – apparently because my brother-in-law had sent a newsletter to 500 subscribers. Gee, it would have been nice if Comcast would have sent them a notice of the possible violation of terms of service first…