Many non-US-based broadband systems impose a download cap — a limit on how much data a customer can download in one month. In some of the Irish ISPs’ cases, it’s 3Gb of data per month, with hefty per-Mb charges after that.
Well, here’s something. I filter my mail for viruses and spam on my server, and divert the viruses off to a side folder. I just checked, and that folder contains 1 gigabyte of virus data, received since SoBig.F started up last week.
Given that most users don’t have a colocated server to divert their viruses on, and therefore would have had to download that 1 gigabyte of virus mail before their virus scanner got to take a look — that’s a hefty third of the download cap gone, due to a virus.
I wonder if Eircom, Telstra down under, and the other capping ISPs, will be giving their customers refunds as a result?
(BTW, by contrast, I only received 10 megs of spam.)