Microsoft Wants To Quarantine Infected Computers At A Cost

Scott Charney, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Trustworthy Computing, has proposed a public computer inspection and quarantine program in order to fight the cyber criminals involved in spreading malicious content on US computer system.

Speaking at the RSA security conference taking place in San Francisco, Charney said that in order to finance the program, the government can levy an Internet usage tax on US citizens in order to protect their PCs from being affected by malicious content. 

According to data presented by security companies, around 3 million computers are affected by malicious viruses, out of which 1 million are in US and are responsible for selling tons of sensitive information every year.

Giving an insight on his thoughts about the proposed computer 'health care' program, Mr. Carney, told Cnet in a statement that “The theory is if a machine is known to be infected do you want it to connect to the network and infect everyone else? Challenge is once you move into the consumer environment you raise a lot of interesting issues.”

Talking to CNET in a Q&A session, when asked about the probability of such a program being made available for customers, Charney hinted that the government might take up the matter 2 to 5 years down the line.