Had a game last night where the decker was in a Rating 8 host and got spotted, and Blaster IC came out.

The Blaster IC hit him, and link locked him (ended up doing a ton of Matrix damage, and the deck was only one box away from being crashed).

Next combat round the Probe IC comes out, and starts to mark his deck, so that the Trace IC can come out and trace his real world location.

The decker (trying again and again to jack out, but unable to beat the host in the opposed test) simply switched his Attack Rating to its lowest setting (3 in this case) and Data Spiked one of the IC. The result, since he could only count three successes on his Data Spike, meant that he took a bunch of Matrix Damage that could not be resisted, crashing his deck, and breaking his connection to the Matrix.

Sure he takes some Biofeedback Damage, but it is better than having a response team sent to your location. Am I missing something, or should this be SOP if you get link locked?

I've never understood how any deckers can get trapped online, save by their own stupidity. Have another system, not connected to your deck, linked with a robotic arm with that will physically unplug your network cable under certain conditions. Either by passively listening in to some other site for you to broadcast "HELP!" there, or a timer going off that you haven't reset. All the software locks in the world to keep you online won't do a darn thing about that.

Setting the attack rating to 3 so that the most likely outcome is that the attack fails is somewhat cheesy.

However, nothing in the rules prevents him from doing it.
Nor, does anything prevent him from data spiking his own deck for that matter.

I'd like to point out though, in the unlikely event of a critical glitch on the repair roll- the deck is toast.
So there is that danger.

Between a dumpshock and a small chance to irrevocably destroy my deck and a GOD HRT... I'll take the former.

Wow