I just received the following e-mail from my cable company:

Please Do Not Respond to This Email  --  If You Have Any Questions, Please Contact Your Local Insight Office.

Dear Insight Broadband Customer,

We are contacting you in regards to your Insight Broadband service.  Our Network Operations Center (NOC) runs a test over our entire network on a regular basis to find computers setup to run as servers.  Your computer has come back with ports open, indicating that it is running as a dedicated Internet server.  Your computer must have these ports closed.  Running a server is against the Insight Broadband Service Agreement (section 9).

Running a dedicated Internet server puts an unnecessary load on our network.  Even if you think you are not using the server, you put yourself at risk to hackers and/or viruses, which could use the open ports to expose and control your computer.  Once a server is circumvented, it can be used to hack into other servers in or outside our network.

If you are running a server-based OS, such as Windows XP Server or Linux, please keep in mind that these operating systems are designed for running dedicated Internet servers.  As such, most of these OSs will open server ports on default, when the system is loaded.

The following is information about your account, and a list of open ports found on your machine:

Account #:nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
IP Address: xx.xxx.x.xx
Open Ports:

Port 53 - Response: www.insightbb.com has address 69.93.78.237

For more information on how to disable these open ports on your machine, you will need to contact your tech support for your computer.  If you have installed the operating system on your own, you should contact the support line for your OS.

This is an important issue and needs immediate action in order to ensure no interruption to your Insight Broadband service.

If you are part of a business and need to run a dedicated server on our network, you may contact our business sales department to inquire about our Business Choice accounts.

As always, if you have any questions about this or any other aspect of you service, please call your local Insight office.  Thank you very much for your cooperation.

Thank You,

Insight Broadband Technical Services

When I signed up for Insight Broadband, I specifically asked two different customer service reps whether I could run servers on my broadband connection.  I was told that wasn’t a problem.  I’ve never been notified of any changes to this policy, but suddenly they’re scanning my ports?  Ok, I’ve modified my DNS server to not respond to outside requests (it wouldn’t normally anyway, but I’m in the process of reconfiguring my network), but I wonder what other ports they’re scanning and what else they’ll get me on.  Should be fun to find out.