Rogers Cuts Off Our Internet Access
The other day, we had a message on our home phone from Rogers High Speed informing us our computer had a virus and they would be temporarily shutting off our Internet access if we didn’t get it fixed within 24 hours. I think my dad mentioned something about running a virus scan, and that was the last I thought of it. The next day they cut us off and we were without Internet access for a little while.
Apparently Rogers runs scans on their network to search for viruses, trojans, worms and open ports on their customers’ computers. Although it was inconvenient to be cut off, I do agree with this practice. Many viruses and worms will send emails or try to send data all over the place, wasting resources and infecting other machines on the network. So by cutting us off, Rogers is preventing other people from potentially getting infected, and they are probably saving themselves some bandwidth at the same time.
Getting reconnected wasn’t too bad, except for a half hour wait on the phone to talk to an actual person. They simply told us to run a virus scanner, make sure everything is clean, and then they reconnected us. They also warned us that future virus problems could result in longer suspensions or termination of service. I don’t necessarily agree with all of Rogers business practices, but in this case I guess they are just doing their part to ensure we are responsible Internet users.