Misleading Advertising Does Not Make The Internet Any Safer

Anyone who has spent time watching the flood of college and pro football games during the end of December and start of January has undoubtedly seen advertised from a certain mega-huge service provider warning folks about the dangers of high speed connections. I believe the tagline goes something like this: "after all, these things come at you much faster now". The ad goes on to talk about spam and virus scanning, blocking spyware and fighting popups. The entire time the viewer is led to believe that these problems increase radically with a high speed connection and that only the mega-huge service provider can protect them.

Repeat after me: B as in B, S as in S.

The speed of your connection has nothing to do with making you more vulnerable to these problems. Whether you are on a T1 or a 28.8 dialup, the delivery method is the same and none of the problems hit until they are actually downloaded to your machine.

If Joe decides to send you three (3) virus emails, a faster connection only means that you will download them quicker. Once they get to your machine, the connection no longer matters as your local software takes over.

Of more impact is the fact that you are usually talking a fulltime connection when you talk higher access speeds. This can expose your machine to hackers who search through the IP blocks known to be associated with broadband or DSL. But folks, this is not what the commercial is talking about.

So before anyone falls for this misleading advertising, you are not inherently at any more risk with a faster connection then you are with a slow dial-up line. The steps necessary to protect your local machine are exactly the same regardless of connection speed. For instance, virus scanners must be used and kept up to date.

To the folks that are lucky enough to have been raised with the modern technology, these probably does not seem like a big issue and you are right. But to those who are new to the internet or not very technically savvy, scare tactics can be effective.

The internet does not need any more scared users, we need users who have a basic understanding of what is going on and are able to surf and email with confidence and safety.