AFAIK, only Windows machines suffer from these problems. So why point a finger at the ISP!?
Get rid of Windows, and your set. Or maybe a surf licence (a la driving licence;) is better in place. If people were a little educated on the web and what's out there, things would improve big time.
Usually they're totally ignorant that their machine is compromised, untill things stop working. They don't give a sh!t, so why would I. Usually what they want is to forward emails that someone once found funny, get a date from MSN and surf rotten.com. If one of these don't work anymore, they panic. I stopped spending my energy fixing these machines long time ago.
Last year some journalists, I think in San Francisco or so, connected 10 machines unprotected to the web. In a couple of minutes, 9 of the 10 were compromised.
If you think that some hacker was waiting for these pc's to connect to make them zombie machines, you couldn't be more wrong. Zombie machines make zombie machines without the slightest user action. They are usually programmed to do so automatically, and they will if the next machine isn't prevented by some [properly set up] firewall or anti-virus. And it's the end user who has to make sure his machine is properly protected, cos MS couldn't care less.
If someone wants to get in
your computer badly, he eventually will, and there's no firewall that can prevent that. If I compare a firewall to my front door: Locking it will stop occasional passants to stay out of my house, but any half-arsed burglar can think of different ways to get thru that locked door.
http://www.grc.com/ is an excellent site with free tools to check your firewall and Windows. There's also some great stories, you'll be amazed what nice toys modern technology offers to the kids in a world with MS machines
