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In BigPond’s March 2009 newsletter, Ponderings, was this little piece:

AUTO UPDATES EAT USAGE
The ‘Auto Update’ function in a lot of software, can eat up your monthly usage allowance without you realising. You may be better off turning Auto Update OFF (usually under Properties) and downloading updates on your own terms.

BigPond is still the biggest ISP in Australia (as far as I know) and would have many non-tech-literate users. Microsoft has, quite rightly, worked hard to make it’s Operating System more secure by enabling automatic security updates by default.

So, seeing this advise published cause me to make an immediate response to @BigpondTeam on Twitter:

@BigPondTeam Ponderings: “you may be better turning Auto Update OFF” – seriously? Sending that to ALL users. Maybe just unmeter Microsoft?

Following the newsletter’s more info link to the full help article was more disturbing:

However, software updates can be huge – and they’re downloaded on your internet account. For example, the essential Windows XP Service Pack 2 update can be up to 260 MB! As an auto update, that could (and did) wipe out some Member’s entire monthly usage allowance without their say-so.

BigPond suggests 1. setting your software to manual updates – I think that is bad advice for the general computer user.

Their second suggestion “get updates without the usage” isn’t much better. Basically they say go to BigPond’s files site (an unmetered site) and download the updates manually. Have they seen how many updates are often pumped out on patch day? So, they expect the user to note each Knowledge Base number and then wander to the site, hope it’s on the files site and then manually install – asking for trouble I say.

Anyway, let’s try it. I looked up the updates from Microsoft for Feb 2009. Out of the 4 updates, 1 looks like it’s for a home computer – so presumably Microsoft Updates would have notified the home user of just 1 update.

MS09-002 – addresses a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer (KB 961260)

Let’s search files.bigpond.com for that one: “No results found for your search.”

Maybe I’m pathetic at searching, but I tried an exact string search for “Windows XP Service Pack 2” also without success. I also tried other combination, but could not find Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Ok, moving on, the third suggestion “increase your download allowance”. That makes Bigpond more money, and is more complicated than they make it sound, as I’ve found that if you change plan mid-way through, you’ll actually be on the changed plan for the rest of that billing period and the next, because you can’t make a second change in the month.

This really is poor advice by BigPond, and as the title says it makes BigPond a “bad net citizen”. It is far more responsible to make sure every one of your customers has access to the latest security updates without hindrance. Surely it would make more sense for BigPond to unmeter the Microsoft site. Wouldn’t a worm wandering the BigPond network because of unsecured computers be more disruptive and expensive than just allowing unmetered security patch downloads?