Colleges Charging Students Who Get Viruses
from the learn-not-to-click...-or-else dept
Many colleges are coming up with a unique strategy for convincing students to figure out how to protect their own computers from viruses and worms. They're disconnecting any infected computers from the internet and fining the student for getting a virus in the first place. Some colleges are doing mandatory virus scans before they'll let a student's computer get on their network. One school district in Ohio claims they almost had to delay the opening of the school year after being hit so hard by viruses. I guess the only way to make students realize that they need to take care of their own machines is to add some monetary penalty (or a lack of internet access) as punishment. However, it does seem to be (in some ways) blaming the victim.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Blaiming the victim?
If you're kid has lice in his/her hair, it's your responsibility to take care of it before you send your kid to school. It is not the school's responsibility to clean up your kids infestation and if they do, don't be surprised if they bill you for it.
In this day and age, anyone who doesn't have some level of anti-virus protection on their computer is simply asking for trouble, or else they have a PC with no floppy drives, no CD drives, no USB ports, no ethernet ports, no modem, etc. and is completely cut off from the outside world. Since most college students don't have computers like that, they *need* anti-virus software.
I'm surprised that the school hasn't investigated purchasing a site license or at least some sort of quantity discount for their students so that everyone can afford a quality anti-virus package.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Blaiming the victim?
Or using a real operating system that is practically invulnerable to viruses and trojan horses in the first place.
How many viruses have been successfully able to flourish in OpenBSD? It may be possible, but nobody has actually done it.
Then again, MacOSX users not running Microsoft software may be safe. And same too for Linux users at the moment, though their operating system is far from invulnerable to worms, viruses, or trojan horses.
Nope, right now the only Operating System really affected by viruses is the slutty, we'll sleep with anyone with a modem, let's include a virus building application (VBA) in our word processor, or root capable backholes in our distributed component object model, operating system that your mom warned you about.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
NTD's ?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]