Cable Modem and Viruses?

[traycee]

Hi All,
I've come across a weird problem. One of our employees was having issues with their cable internet connection (mediacom) at their home. They called the cable company to have them come out and check their connection. A service tech cam out and told them, after checking their connection and calling the home office that their "cable modem" has a virus and that even though Mediacom keeps charging them for Internet service...they have turned them off. Once they get the virus removed from the external cable/dsl modem they can be reconnected and then they have two more strikes before they will be disconnected permanently. What in the heck are they talking about? Sounds like a lot of hooey to me....but I thought I should check to be sure. There computer is virus free. The service tech could not tell them what virus they had. Could not tell them how to remove it?

 

[jimbopalmer]

I am unaware of modems with viruses, but many are shut down by the ISP because the PC has viruses.

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

is a free checker for the PC



I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[MaxPipeline]

Modems don't really have much intelligence. They really are only there to convert whatever your cable signal is to Ethernet. I agree with Jimbopalmer. Most likely the PC connected to the modem has a virus and is causing slowdowns due to high traffic usage or something. But if you ask me that is really screwed up what Mediacom is doing. This three strikes and your out policy would be enough for me to switch providers. Especially if they won't even warn you before they cut you off. Your employee should make sure he has all current Microsoft Windows updates and a good virusscan software such as Norton or McAfee. I would also highly advise a software or hardware firewall to prevent hackers from planting viruses on his computer.

 

[traycee]

Thanks for the replies. Jimbo is correct. I called Mediacom for our employee and found out that they did in fact turn off their service because their PC had a virus that was generating email traffic. Mediacom's 'abuse department' is supposed to contact the customer before the cutoff takes place, but "sometimes they are just too busy and are unable to make the call." How nice of them to cut off a client's service but continue to accept payment. First they told me that the modem was infected and that it needed to be cleaned, then they told me they sometimes cutoff clients for downloading movies and songs and such from Kazaa, then they finally said that the modem was being used as a 3rd party for spammers and that spam was an illegal activity (it should be but as far as I know there is no law against it yet). Anyway, the jist of it is that the employee needs to clean up her computer, which she should do anyway, and then she gets two more chances. The whole thing just ticks me off as it was handled very unprofessionally on the part of Mediacom. I've advised the employee to clean up their PC and then switch internet services. Thanks for both of your inputs.