Wednesday 28 May 2003

Pic of the day: "Wonder what happens if I click on that?" (Screenshot from The Sims.)

Viruses and stupidity

I've collected 3 of them now in my e-mail inbox. They are viruses. And they pass themselves off as undelivered mail. Of course people are curious as to what mail they have sent that has not been delivered! So they click on the attachment, and engage their computer in virus production, much to their own surprise. (If they even discover it at all.) Anyway, if you get a notice about undelivered mail, you should probably not open the attachment. You should probably not even look at the attachment. You can see from the plain text that it was attempted delivered to someone you have never heard about, so it is none of your business.

Oh, and if you have an e-mail reader that opens mail instead of just showing you the plain text, you get what's coming to you. It is a sad thing that you cannot safely open your e-mail anymore. But it is also a sad thing that you cannot walk leisurely along the streets and highways anymore. And at least you don't die from e-mail virus.

***

Not all have the talent to write advanced little programs, or the contacts to become a script kiddie and use other people's virus code. But if you have a talent for writing English (or your native language), you can still get the job done. I've noticed a number of e-mails circulating, based on the following formula:
"We have just been notified by Microsoft (or AOL, or whatever authority figure seems to work) that a dangerous virus is being spread. It can not be discovered by antivirus programs. You have to remove it manually. The name of the virus is (some system file which should not be removed). Delete this file, and be sure to forward this mail to all your friends and relatives and everyone in your church and their pet poodle and all the king's horses and all the king's men."

I see this one now and then at work. I don't see it at home, though, because I have no friends or relatives that are on that rung of the evolutionary ladder.

Of course, this is just a special case of the chain letter, which is just a special case of something else. They call it a "meme" these days, but when I was young it was called "hearsay" (not heresy, which is something else again). Or rumor. For instance, one classmate of me in high school had on good authority that venereal diseases (what we now correctly call sexually transmitted diseases) came from women not washing themselves properly. Now to be honest, I don't think his belief in this matter had any effect whatsoever, but if he had been more handsome it might have been a problem...

And of course, there are all the "miracle" cures against cancer and such. Someone has heard of someone who knows a friend of a relative of a colleague of someone who used snake oil or whatever and was miraculously healed. I guess there is the fine point that you can't get the money with you anyway, so what if you are swindled? If you cannot be healed by serious treatment, you are dead anyway. But your relatives may, in retrospect, think differently. They may at least want to give you a decent burial. The really bad cases, however, are those who turn their back on scientific treatment in order to pursue miracle cures. That's when, as an online acquaintance put it, "there is no need to impose death penalty on stupidity".

Viruses of the mind can indeed kill. I won't serve up more examples today. You can probably think of other examples yourself. Ideologies, religions etc that convince stupid people to do things that harm themselves and others. In comparison, I guess a small computer virus is not the worst thing that could hit you. But I still think you shouldn't open undelivered mail...