In a society where the Internet has become almost a necessity to keep up
with current social and workplace trends, it is time an independent body was
set up to deal with cases where an ISP deems a user to be 'undesirable'.
It has been known for ISP's to shut down, without prior warning, many
clients accounts. The only realisation for the client is not being able to
log-on to their account one day, effectively losing all internet
connectivity.
Many [ex-] Freeserve members will testify to having numerous accounts shut
down during a netcopping feud between newsgroups. Spurious complaints were
made after targeting a 'victim'. Numerous users would send abuse reports to
the victim's Freeserve account, two abuse reports equals one frozen account.
The abuse reports were assessed by the ENERGIS network team, on occasions
the same report was considered to be both 'abusive' and 'not abusive' I.e.
the same complaint reported from two different sources resulted in
contradicting replies from two different ENERGIS employees.
So, it was down to the luck of the draw on who read the offending material,
and your ISP account was shut down, or not.
As anyone who relies on the internet will know, this can be a devastating
blow to everyday life. Suddenly losing an established domain name, e-mail
address and web access can be extremely stressful for the client.
The situation today is that ISP's can virtually pick and choose customers at
whim, closing accounts down with no accountability except to their own
internal appeals process.
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