After 20+ years in the industry I pride myself on being fairly aware of such dangers, but just yesterday I put a new hard disk in a system, installed Windows XP and foolishly installed the networking before I installed service pack 2, the firewall and anti-virus software.
While downloading Verizon's Online DSL and MSN Premium, I picked up a virus. My only contact with the internet was to make initial contact with my provider and the system was infected. It took me a while to figure out what had happened and soon I had lost a day's work.
They could put these punks away for 20 to life and I wouldn't think it was overkill.
the sick part is that every new pc from the box is already missing the very things it needs to protect it from it's first access to the internet - if a cd with all the SP2 updates and basic antivirus were provided WITH the machine, it would stop a lot of problems.
So, the big question is, why can't DELL or MICROSOFT provide a cd with the essentials at the POS? For their "POS"? lol...
The card that says "before you turn the POS on, make sure you remove the wrap"? could also have a cd dangling from it, saying "after you turn the POS on, load this".