U.S. residential Internet users are much more satisfied with the spam protection from their Internet service providers, but remain unhappy with their ISPs' defenses against hackers and viruses, J.D. Power and Associates said Wednesday.

In its 2004 survey of 9,500 residential customers, ISPs' ability to keep spam at bay received the largest satisfaction gains over 2003, the market researcher said. Hacker and virus protection, on the other hand, was the only one of seven factors addressed in the survey to register a decline.

"The level of sophistication in spam filters have improved significantly," J.D. Power analyst Steve Kirkeby said. "(But) consumers are saying let's go further. Let's install a firewall, too."

By Antone Gonsalves at Tech Web.

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