The latest NOP survey of 1,000 consumers found that just over half (51%) felt that their ISP's should block spyware apps. These are small programs that collect personal data, often installed behind the scenes when visiting some websites:

End user attitudes to seldom offered spyware screening services from ISPs mirror attitudes to spam filtering when such services were in their infancy four or five years ago.

The NOP Survey, sponsored by security firm Blue Coat, which sells proxy appliances designed to block spyware from invading corporate boundaries, found only a third (36 per cent) of respondents understand what spyware is. One in 10 of those quizzed thought it was "a gadget from Star Wars". Although 30 per cent of respondents run spyware checkers on their office PC, the survey sample suggests that they've installed programs such as Microsoft Anti-Spyware and Spybot Search and Destroy independent of their IT departments.

Due to the nature of how Spyware works it would be a technical nightmare for ISP’s to block. The best any provider could do would be to educate and prevent access to websites that play host to such code, although we can see problems arising from this.

In reality there are plenty of third party software applications capable of doing it, while website browser authors must share the bulk of blame for failing to code in more sophisticated protection against such apps.